Daedalus Bound
by Magi Silverwolf
Summary: Tony Stark had a laundry list of character defects. Nowhere on it was "abandon a child who needed help", especially not one who didn't have a Rhodey looking for them. (PoA - Iron Man)
1. Labyrinths

**Disclaimer:** I do not own the original canon nor am I making any profit from writing this piece. All works are accredited to their original authors, performers, and producers while this piece is mine. No copyright infringement is intended. I acknowledge that all views and opinions expressed herein are merely my interpretations of the characters and situations found within the original canon and may not reflect the views and opinions of the original author(s), producer(s), and/or other people.

 **Warnings:** This story may contain material that is not suitable for all audiences and may offend some readers. There's a small child from an abusive home in the custody of a terrorist cell that is willing to torture a captive in the hopes to force him to build them weapons. There's a lot of trigger potential in that. Please exercise understanding of personal boundaries before and during reading.

 **Author's Note(s):** So, um, a really bad description of this piece is "Harry Potter as a child is in the cave when the Ten Rings kidnap Tony Stark". Believe it or not, this is the part of the series that I started writing _first_ , and then I backtracked into other parts of how things happened as I fought with getting it the way I wanted it. Everything has been building to this, even though this is not the culmination.

 **Challenge/Competition Block** :  
 **Stacked:** Not Commonwealth; Sky's the Limit; Terms of Service; By Any Other Name; _Neurodivergent (Autism)_ **  
Representation:** Tony Stark; Asexual Character; Scientists & Inventors; Starks/Defense Squad  
 **Bonus Challenge(s):** Endless Wonder; Second Verse (Zucchini Bread); _Second Verse (Wabi Sabi)_ ; Second Verse (Middle Name); _Second Verse (Nightingale)_ ; Second Verse (Tomorrow's Shade); Second Verse (Unwanted Advice); Second Verse (Nontraditional); Second Verse (Found Family); Second Verse (Ladylike – Aggressive/Threatening); Second Verse (Unicorn)  
 **Word Count** : 4313

-= LP =-  
 **The Purpose of Aeries**  
 _Daedalus Bound_  
Part 01: Labyrinths  
-= LP =-  
"Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else."  
– Fred Rogers  
-= LP =-

The darkness felt thick as it covered Tony Stark like an unwanted blanket. He shoved at it irritably, determined to conquer as he had so many of his goals over his lifetime. Something like a hand ( _except so much smaller than an adult's_ ) touched his neck and foggy memories wiggled loose, vying for simultaneous attention. The memory of something moving around in his chest ( _by the madness of Tesla, someone had opened him up, hadn't they?_ ) strongly resembled the violated and dirty feelings he refused to acknowledge from MIT ( _before Rhodey had started interfering and scaring off potential hook-ups; before Rhodey had started carrying him off to beds while refusing to have sex with him; simply before Rhodey_ ) while facing a blinking camera had been hauntingly familiar ( _no Eym or Jarvis this time but Rhodey would find him; Rhodey won't give up. Rhodey would_ _ **never**_ _give up on him, because Rhodey would let the world_ _ **burn**_ _first_ ).

The not-hand lifted his head carefully. With the extra pressure came more memories, older ones that Tony tried not think about because they _hurt_ to remember. The memories distract him from the chilly liquid trickling over his lips. It hit the back of his throat at the same time Ana's face burst to life through the darkness ( _"How quickly you forget, Mr. Stark, what acts I am willing to commit for that boy._ _Lay a finger on_ _ **my son**_ _in anger again and none of your well-trained spies will be able to save you."_ ) The hand ( _too small, too small, too small_ ) twitched against the back of his neck as he choked on both the memory and the water ( _cold, metallic, brown_ ).

"Sorry," a small voice ( _too small to be Jarvis or Aunt Peggy; too small to even be JARVIS_ ) whispered as the darkness pressed harder against him.

Like the hand, the voice is _too small_. No one should ever be that little and in a place where there was gunfire and pain and his weapons— _oh, fucking Tesla_ , either the US military had turned on itself or monsters had gotten the weapons he had made for them. Did they have the body armor? The communication systems? They certainly didn't have the medical tech because, _fucking hell_ , his body was a mass of pain. All he wanted was _Rhodey_. Rhodey made everything _better_ ; Nowhere was safer than with a Rhodes, even the jerky ones like Joey. Everything hurt but it was going to be okay, because Rhodey would find him.

Rhodey would never give up, not in a million years; Rhodey would let the world burn first.

The darkness managed to drag Tony back into oblivion.

-= LP =-

There was no darkness when Tony next became aware. Or rather there _is_ , because lighting in caves tended to suck, but it was not the same smothering shadows from the half-memory. Tony knew that something was wrong, beyond the entire lack of JARVIS' familiar hum from the area, but he couldn't think past the dryness in his throat and feeling of _violation_ that came with the feel of things shoved in his body. To offset the latter, he pulled the tube out of his nose ( _oh, Turing, it was down his throat_ ) with hands that didn't want to cooperate.

He laid there panting after finally getting it free. His mind was buzzing with ideas that he _knew_ he wasn't going to be able to work on or get out of his head, not for a _long time_ if ever, meaning that they're stay there buzzing, buzzing, buzzing until they _burned_ or he could drown them properly. He was already exhausted from them.

One problem down. Onto the next one: _thirst_.

Tony spotted a cup on something resembling a nightstand nearby. He reached for it, stretching as far as he could. His fingers glanced off the rim of it, succeeding only in making it fall. The splash and thunk of it nearly covered the quiet sound of a sharp gasp.

Startled, Tony looked down, immediately meeting a pair of green eyes wide with surprise. The face that held the eyes had murky rivers of water dripping down from limp, black curls. The unexpected eye contact made Tony's already upset stomach give a threatening twist, but already the boy was dropping his gaze. The kid then scrabbled to grab the cup and refill it from a crude earthen pitcher on the same nightstand. Without saying a word or meeting Tony's eyes again, the boy held out the cup for Tony to take.

Two urges welled up within him, warring with equal viciousness. He was so _fucking thirsty_ , but being handed things too often meant _dropping them_ , which was embarrassing and something that Starks weren't supposed to do. A wave of painful _want_ for Happy or Pepper cut through him. They were always so quick to step in at these moments, to explain and cover the issue. Rhodey would have already stepped in to fix it. Of course, if it was his platypus offering the cup, this wouldn't even be an issue because Rhodey knew how to hand things to him without setting off the twitch that made him drop things like an idiot. Then again, Rhodey being present would have meant _not being here_ , where it wasn't _safe_. He should have listened to Rhodey when he had told Tony that he didn't need to come to the Jericho demo, that it was too much of a risk, and that it was stupid to have one in a hot zone anyway.

"I don't like being handed things," Tony managed, though his voice was hoarse and cracked. The boy glanced up briefly to look at his face before shuffling closer. Tony eyed the increasing tension across the boy's shoulders and the fluttering of the pulse in his neck, both obvious even in the dim light of the space. Even with Tony laid out on his back and clearly as weak as a kitten, the kid didn't want to come any closer than strictly necessary. Since he understood the juxtaposition better than most would have, Tony gritted his teeth against the _dislike_ and reached out his left hand to take the blasted cup, already steeling himself against any reaction that meant dropping the thing.

The brush of skin against skin lasted barely more than a second, but something whipped through Tony, like an electric charge. The taste of maple syrup burst on his tongue, reminding him very strongly of Sunday mornings at MIT, when Rhodey (and later Jenny) would make waffles. Whatever it was had startled the kid as well, because those green eyes flashed upwards again, meeting Tony's before hastily skittering back to the floor. As soon as Tony's grip on the cup was solid, the kid likewise skittered away, disappearing under a chunk of something that looked like it was being used as a table. Recognition hit him like a blow.

Tony knew this pattern.

He _knew_ it, same as he knew the pattern of Rhodey's visits or how Jarvis had liked his tea. He could still remember how it felt, being _too small_ to do more than to hide from danger and _too alone_ to expect help. A memory of Ana Jarvis rose up again, not quite as sharply as before but still clear enough that he could see the rage in her blue eyes as she had advanced on his father. The same rage filled him, and he spared only a thought to be grateful that the kid couldn't see him at the moment because there was no way that it wasn't on his face. If this was what Rhodey had always felt, then there was no wondering why he had always said the things that he did.

Right at that moment, Tony would have been willing to let the world _burn_ if it meant protecting the kid, and yeah, Rhodey was right, _absolutely right_ as always, when he said that it had started in an instant.

"I wouldn't do that, if I was you," said a voice (vaguely familiar; lecturer? Meet & greet? Business or science?), interrupting Tony's unconscious move to follow the kid off the bed. Tony glanced over at the source, refusing to acknowledge the whisper about the stupidity of being distracted to the point of not noticing the speaker before then. His mind tumbled the words around, trying to decode the message and analyze the voice. The tone was _off_ , annoyance clear but also impatient warning. Pepper sounded like that occasionally, usually when she was tired of his quote/unquote _misbehavior_ making her job harder. (Admittedly, a good chunk of those times were the times that Tony had gone out of his way to do something just because it annoyed either her or Rhodey, so yeah, her tone was _fair_.) Tony coughed once before remembering the cup in his hand. He cautiously took a drink, letting the flavors ( _cold, metallic, brown_ ) burst across his senses, as he twisted to see the speaker.

Tony's mind was sorting details at speeds that he normally kept slowed by alcohol because thinking too fast had a tendency to hurt after a while if he didn't have a project at hand—and he didn't like what conclusions he was making. The man had been shaving; the child's hair was tangled. The man wore mostly clean and fitting clothes; the boy had on visibly dirty clothing that looked six sizes too large. The cave had lighting and plumbing, which was accessible, but there was something off. Tony's gaze darted around the confines again—and finally spotted the obvious camera. He didn't pause until he had spotted another two cameras hidden in less obvious spots. Hypothesis tested, he returned his gaze to the man watching Tony through the mirror as he used a straight razor to remove the hair from his throat and cheeks.

"Wha—" Tony's throat felt like it was cracking at the strain of trying to speak. Oh, great, that's just what he needed, to be _stupidly_ falling apart like a weakling. Viciously, he bit his bottom lip, hoping to counter both the choking sensation in his throat and the sense memory of the time Jenny had made him handwrite ( _not type_ , because sisters were just as evil as Rhodey had always warned) how he wasn't weak for having limitations. It had the unfortunate side effect of clearing the hazy feeling that had been clinging to the edges of his mind, making him increasingly aware of his physical state. The thirst and hunger were muted compared to the growing awareness of _something_ in his chest. He downed the rest of the water before carefully sitting the cup back on the nightstand-thing and turning his attention to the wires connecting something under the bandages on his chest to a battery on a table to the right of his bed.

' _Oh, fucking hell,_ ' was Tony's only coherent thought as he connected the invasive feeling of something _inside him_ with what he was seeing. He didn't care if it was childish or weak, but he suddenly wanted nothing more than Rhodey to shake him awake and tell him that this was just a nightmare, just some terrible, horrible, very bad dream, and everything was alright. Tony licked his lips as his mouth went dry again. His fingers twitched, wanting to feel Rhodey's shirt between them or even Jenny's. What he wouldn't do to have a Rhodes nearby—he'd even settle for Joey, despite how they clashed whenever they were forced to interact outside of Mama's sight. Nothing was safer than a Rhodes.

Fingers curled around his wrist, slipping easily under the cuff of his jacket. An image flashed through his mind of the cameras in the room watching. It was quickly followed by an image of the shaving man looking stressed and desperate as _things_ moved around inside of Tony's chest and a sour-sweetness filled his senses. Tony's mind raced in a thousand directions, struggling to process everything. What he wouldn't do for a stiff scotch right then—abruptly, the sensation of remembering everything disappeared, leaving him feeling nauseated and wrung out. Tony whipped his head around just in time to see the kid disappearing under the table-thing again.

Tony licked his lips, barely registering the way they stung among the ache throughout the rest of his body. This was a terrible situation and he just knew it was going to get worse before it got better.

It was only after meeting his host that Tony understood just how _worse_ it would get.

-= LP =-

Tony's mind felt raw as it raced through potential strategies. The situation sucked, yeah, and the probability of every plan he had thought up so far being successful was not inspiring. If it was just him, the numbers were better, but there was no way he was leaving either of his fellow captives, even if the man was a bit of an asshole. Maybe not a _flamingo_ exactly but definitely one of the typical snipers that frequented the science conventions and seminars that he had been a presenter or lecturer at over the years. Tony didn't present as often anymore, trying to focus more on growing SI to the point that they fully uncouple themselves from weapon manufacturing. Being known as the _Merchant of Death_ would have been enough for Howard and Obie certainly seemed to covet the title that the media had bestowed on Tony, but he wanted _more_. He wanted the emphasis to be on _Da Vinci of our time_ , for people to recognize the things he had accomplished that weren't tied up in Howard's legacy. Tony would even take up painting if that's what it took.

Starks were made of iron and so were weapons, yes, but so were skyscrapers and arc reactors and cars.

Tony stared into the fire, not paying attention to his exchanges with the man he was trapped with—Ho Yinsen, apparently, which is funny because he had always wanted to meet a man named Ho. _Ah, shit, that sounded familiar._ The thought hit him exactly a moment before Ho began talking about the disaster that was Bern2000. The snide comment about his drinking really was uncalled for, especially since Tony had been going through a sobriety period at the time. Jenny had insisted as repayment of having dealt with Rhodey's threats of taking a discharge to keep him out of trouble and away from people like Sunset Bain. Not that the story had made more than the tabloids, so really, Ho probably didn't know and drinking in social situations was something Tony was known for. Maybe he could forgive the guy, at least for the duration of their captivity.

When they got out of here, Rhodey could decide what details the good doctor needed to know. Rhodey was good at determining things like that, the absolute best. His platypus was an expert at things like that. Tony simply _wasn't_. His babies certainly took after Rhodey, which was great even if it was something that Tony complained about constantly when he was back home. He would give a good chunk of what he had to be there now, drinking one of Dummy's smoothies while playing catch with U and arguing with JARVIS. Butterfingers would be fussing with his chessboard and Pepper would probably be upstairs, doing what she did best as she decided where to point SI next.

He really should get around to actually appointing her to the position that she already does. It would do wonders for her stress levels and now she wasn't coming out of nowhere on the poor 'old guard' either. They've had a decade now to get used to her. _Forbes_ already knew who really ran Stark Industries, even if _People_ and _Time_ liked to focus on him and Obie. It should be obvious that her appointment wasn't earned on her back, right? At least to those who had dealt with her across the table.

Tony Stark was not the type to doubt himself like this, to feel this indecisive on things. There was just not time for it because changing the world took a surprising amount of effort. When he made decisions, even something as seemingly simple as appointing an obviously competent successor as CEO, they were never just about him. Stark Industries employed a little over three million people in seventeen countries. Anything he decided to do that could have an effect on the profitability of SI had to be weighed with that in mind. With a thoughtless action, he could directly impact the lives of four-point-three percent of the world. Because Stark Industries was primarily in the business of military technology, that possible impact increased exponentially from just the employees of the company. Soldiers went into battle with Stark weapons protected by Stark armor. If they were injured, the chances were fair that it was Stark medical equipment used to treat them while Stark communication equipment got them evac'ed. Lives as well as livelihoods depended upon his decisions.

It was a lot of pressure, but he was a Stark.

Starks were made of iron, which did not buckle under pressure.

It did take quite a bit of planning to pull off some of the stuff he had. Thankfully, Tony was a genius capable of spinning scenarios and calculations in moments that would take even the fastest computer hours or days. He could only work when he had all the variables, of course, but as luck would have it, he was typically good at connecting the dots even when he was missing a few of them. He was also damn good at getting the information that people tried to keep from him, regardless of what obstacles were placed in his way.

Waking up in a cave after his military convoy had been blown to hell was definitely an obstacle he had never prepared for, but being kidnapped wasn't anything _new_ exactly, just inconvenient. It had taken the last seven years to get to the point that he could successfully leverage Stark Industries out of the weapons trade. The Jericho was going to be their last missile-because, _yes_ , Miss Everhart, that would help him sleep better at night, _thank you_. He had looked forward to being able to rub that in her smug face when he got back from Afghanistan. Maybe he should have pushed for an earlier announcement, but Obie had a valid point about waiting for the old contracts to come up for renegotiation before making the announcement. As it stood, Obie and Pepper were the only ones with a head's up on the shift. Rhodey knew that he was planning to change _something_ with SI's contracts, as he was the official liaison and Tony wasn't going to leave him hanging like that, but Tony hadn't wanted to deal with his grumbling any sooner than necessary.

Tony wondered if Obie would still go ahead with their plan for about three minutes before discarding it as unlikely. _Merchant of Death_ would definitely be Tony's legacy should he die here, with the judgy man called _Ho_ (that joke would _never_ get old) and the small boy who made the same amount of noise as a shadow. Obie had never liked the idea of shutting down the weapons division, citing how Howard had felt about its role in the company and how _he_ felt about its role in their profit margins. Tony hadn't wanted to make too big a deal over the illogical uneasiness he felt listening to Obie's arguments and then his one-eighty acquiescence to Tony's new direction.

Tony was self-aware enough to know that those types of feelings usually meant that he had processed something too fast to be consciously aware of it—sometimes the speed that his mind worked at, even when deliberately slowed with alcohol was _very_ annoying—so instead of just ignoring it, Tony had set JARVIS auditing the company files and Obadiah's personal communications. If there was anything to the feeling, JARVIS would find it, regardless of whether Tony was there or not. If there wasn't, then at least JARVIS got to practice his hacking skills. It was a win-win.

Of course, there was always the possibility that his current predicament was tied into all that crap rather than just happy circumstance, sarcasm totally implied. It didn't help that Ho Yinsen had the same self-righteous attitude that Tony had been putting up with from the old scientist crowd for years, made even worse due to the chop job in Tony's chest being his work. (That won't be true once Tony had access to materials because he would willingly believe in an Invisible Man in the Sky before he believed that he couldn't build a better electromagnet than a _car battery_.) Being trapped with a man who was as subtle as a brick about his desire for Tony to _just build something already_ would grate on anyone's nerves. Tony didn't need it on top of going through complete detox for the first time in five years and his growing collection of aches. Surprising how much having a chunk of one's sternum replaced fucking hurt, wasn't it?

Then there was the little kid that had been shoved into the space with them. Well, maybe a rephrase on that because the kid was in there before the botched assassination _cum_ kidnapping landed Tony in the custody of the Ten Rings. It was Tony who was late to the party. Watching how Ho ( _my name is 'Yinsen', Stark; stop calling me 'Ho'_ ) interacted with the kid ( _they called him 'Harry' when they left him, but he hasn't said anything yet_ ), Tony always felt uncomfortably reminded of Pepper's exasperated impatience or Obie's condescending patience. The discomfort stemmed from the fact that instead of steamrolling over the complaints like Tony would have, the kid would snap into action to complete whatever Ho told him to do. After growing up with Howard Stark, Tony didn't particularly _like_ anything he was seeing in the kid, especially since the kid couldn't have his own version of Rhodey to fight for him.

Scrutinizing things did not change Tony's conclusion about the kid's past, or his present for that matter. Ho mentioning that he had kids around Harry's age didn't help as much as the man clearly thought it would. The kid—who barely answers to the name Ho said was _his_ , which was way beyond _bad_ —had a habit of trying to keep their space clean while staying out of their way. It took longer that Tony cared to admit to actually notice that the kid lingered over Tony's stuff, organizing it even better than Dummy and U had ever managed despite them being trained to do it and supervised by JARVIS most of the time. He also had a habit of placing whatever Tony was trying to find just within his reach—never trying to hand him anything, not since that first time with the cup of water. Harry was only slightly more willing to be within reach of Tony than Ho and not once had Harry been the one to initiate touch between him and Ho like he had with Tony (not that Tony's been paying attention to that or anything; he just noted it, is all).

Tony's normal MO was to become absorbed in his work, to the exclusion of all other things. So it was strange to be continually aware of the kid no matter where he was in the room. Ho had the same demanding impatience with the kid that he had with Tony, even if Tony couldn't think of anything that the kid would be able to do that he wasn't already doing. Then again, Tony couldn't think of any reason a terrorist organization would want a kid, so maybe he was missing key portions of the data set.

Whatever the kid was doing in the delightful hospitality of the Ten Rings, Tony was thankful that he was spared the daily _incentive_ trips, even if they always took the kid somewhere else before they came for Tony and returned him after Tony was back at work. They probably didn't even realize how much of Tony's drive to complete his projects was his understanding of human dynamics; he knew that this particular bit of timing wouldn't last forever. Eventually, someone would notice how the kid hovered over Tony, and arrange for him to _see_ what Tony was going through, or given the average intelligence of these guys, it would be just an unfortunate bit of timing or maybe impatience with whatever Ho was attempting to get the kid to do or on Tony's production of his alleged Jericho. Then they would target the kid more directly—show him that someone else would suffer the consequences of his choices and Tony was willing to bet that the kid would fold faster than a house of cards.

Whatever the plan was here, there had to be a way to come out on top, and Tony had better get it done sooner rather than later.

Something told him that they were already operating on borrowed time and regardless of what Rhodey might have to say about this opinion, getting the kid out and to safety had to be the focus, the thing that mattered most. Harry didn't deserve to spend his life in a place like this, where he hid under tables to escape monsters who should have never had him in the first place. He deserved to be _safe_ , to have someone like Ana or Mama or Jenny to take care of him, someone who would be fierce but comforting and who would spoil him with affection like he needed.

Tony would do anything to make that happen.

He just first had to do the impossible and get them out of the cave.

-= LP =-  
 _To be continued in Part 02: Wings_  
-= LP =-


	2. Wings

**Author's Note:** Y'all may not be interested, but this piece was originally supposed to be a oneshot like most of the series. Then I was _certain_ that this was definitely going to be a twoshot. Then I was absolutely sure that it was just going to be a three-parter. I was when I was writing the third part and realized that there was no way I could cut Rhodey's interaction with Harry or JARVIS that I finally realized that the characters had officially ran away with my nice & simply plot of "Tony found a kid at this point and it changed things but not really" and this thing was likely going to be five parts. As an interesting tidbit to build upon this: I am _certain_ that the piece after this one, _Something like Soaring_ , is going to be a twoshot, but May's already made one generous offer to reenact SHIELD history with her stapler for Phil, so who knows how that will end up?

 **Challenge/Competition Block** :  
 **Stacked with:** Not Commonwealth; Terms of Service; By Any Other Name; Neurodivergent (Autism)  
 **Representation:** Tony Stark; Inventors/Heroes; Starks/Rhodes  
 **Bonus Challenge(s):** Endless Wonder; Fire & Fold; Second Verse (Found Family); _Second Verse (Wabi Sabi)_ ; Second Verse (Middle Name); Second Verse (Tomorrow's Shade); Second Verse (Unwanted Advice); Second Verse (Zucchini Bread)  
 **Word Count** : 4288

-= LP =-  
 **The Purpose of Aeries**  
 _Daedalus Bound_  
Part 02: Wings  
-= LP =-  
"When all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful." – Ruskin Bond  
-= LP =-

There were times when Tony hated being right.

He had managed to get everything to the point of just needing assembled when a group of their hosts burst into their room with demands for Ho. There was a fair chance that Ho was in on whatever plot they had, a plant to play on the sympathetic nature of co-captivity (and maybe he shouldn't read Jenny's books as a means of coping with being kidnapped because that was a bizarre thing to think about in the current situation), but that didn't seem to be enough to protect him from their manhandling this time. Not that Ho seemed to care about the glowing coal being held above his face threateningly as he answered whatever the repeated demand was with the same declaration of _Jericho_. Tony couldn't tell if it was actual loyalty or just some kind of weird death wish.

However, Tony lost sight of the kid in the shuffling.

He felt the edge of his normal mental burn pressing close as he tried to talk them out of making Ho eat a coal from the makeshift forge Tony had created ( _by Tesla and Asimov, if he managed it, he'll stop joking and call the man by his given name, just let it work,_ _please_ ) while running through possible locations that could have hidden Harry. Tony barely noted any of the words spilling from his mouth—the kid was missing; Tony couldn't see him. He needed to deal with this situation as quickly as possible, so he could find him. Their room didn't have enough hiding spots for him to still be in the room. Would they have taken him out, like they did before taking Tony to be waterboarded? Would the kid come back just as exhausted as he usually did from those trips?

The growing panic was worse than anything they had done to him—Tony hadn't even noticed how important the kid had become to him, how much attention he had been paying the kid, how much he had noted and processed about the kid. He couldn't breathe, his mind spinning scenario after scenario with the speed of creation, too fast even for his mind to fully comprehend it all. He would have preferred drowning to this suffocation as he _burned_ from the inside, his genius turned into a hungry beast.

Then, as he shifted his weight forward to make his point in the _useless_ negotiation with Raza, Tony felt a small hand slipping under the hems of his hoodie and tank to touch skin-to-skin. It felt like how he had always imagined a closed circuit feeling in the moment the zero became a one and far different from the other times that Harry had touched him. Tony dropped a hand to the kid's shoulder and breathed in a wash of calm. It was easier to think, to find the words needed to ensure that Yinsen stayed with them, and intact to boot despite the other doctor having been a bit of jerk.

His mind spun thoughts faster than he had ever experienced outside of one of his chemical experiments back in college but _much, much_ clearer. It was like the entire universe was opening before him; Tony could see a thousand possibilities weaving themselves into existence as the blood rushed in his ears. No, more than that: infinite possibilities, all of them full of corpses scattered with bright flashes that might be hope but could just as easily be energy weapons or flames. The world was ending and beginning a thousand times in the space between heartbeats, all in a rippling rainbow of colorful lights. It was beautiful beyond all compare and just as tragic.

Things stretched backwards as well, his mind making intuitive leaps that it had previously made too quickly for him to realize. Tony didn't have to confirm with JARVIS to know that Obie was behind the stockpile of Stark weapons he had spent the last three months turning to scraps—he could see all the signs, all the little things which had nagged at him before he had left, the ones which had made him set JARVIS his task. Obie had probably set it all up in the few years when he was CEO after Howard's death but before Tony had taken over as CEO. Trusting Obie, who had always been there and a part of the company, the way that Tony had meant that Tony _hadn't looked_ for signs of betrayal.

Tony could see how one of the best decisions he had made for Stark Industries was the one to whisk Pepper out of Accounting to be his personal assistant. She already took excellent care of the legacy that was Stark Industries, far better than Tony had ever managed before he had found her and she hadn't responded to his flirting with more than an eyeroll, a sigh, and a reminder that a doodle of Princess Leia's hairbuns was not a valid signature. He had planned on making her CEO long before now, had always planned on it, and he could see now why he had been making excuses the last few years to keep her close. It unsurprisingly had little to do with the production shift he had been working on and everything to do with enjoying the huffy sigh she makes when she's particularly annoyed with him. It was very similar to the one that Jenny made when dealing with him, Joey, or Rhodey. It still wasn't a justifiable reason to hold both her and the company back.

Everything made sense; everything was so clear.

Then the bits Tony had observed about the kid crashed over him. He could see how frustrated Yinsen would get whenever Harry wouldn't do some mysterious thing (and whatever it was couldn't be good, because terrorist groups had only a limited use for child captives and Harry clearly wasn't a political prisoner of some sort); how quickly the kid would attempt to dodge any touch while inching closer to Tony's bubble, like a moth drawn to a porch lamp ( _a nice blue one, just like the arc node now saving Tony's life_ ). He understood finally how Harry had to possess some kind of mutation that affected whoever he touched. Oh, and Tony could connect all the little things now, all the moments when something had been just out of reach but then there or when the electricity not quite behaving correctly before smoothing out or the flickers of shadows that curled too much to be natural but stayed just out of direct sight. Harry had more than whatever was fueling this little mind expansion hallucination thing that was happening.

Tony was willing to bet a sizable chunk of SI funds that whoever had the kid before the Ten Rings not only knew about those abilities but _reviled_ him for them. Harry stayed out of reach with a diligence that couldn't be newly acquired; he stayed quieter than Tony ever had when sneaking into Howard's lab. Tony didn't want to see the parallels there but now he couldn't _unsee_ them. Howard Stark may have been colder than a glacier, as distant as the moon, and as calculating as a CPA during tax season, but he had never taken it physical while sober, even as rare as that had been. No one could live every moment of the day drunk and keep a kid with multiple active mutations secret.

Someone had gone out of their way to deliberately make the kid fear them, and others who might have helped.

Harry had been alone in a hellhole long before he found himself in one with Tony.

Like one of his creations accepting a new line of code, it all slid into place: Harry was uniquely precious and if no one else was going to protect him, then Tony would. He would get the kid out of this god-forsaken cave and finally _safe_. He would then spend the rest of his life doing absolutely anything to erase the hopeless look in the kid's eyes, to make him happy and safe and lo— _cared_ for. It was even stronger than the protective urge that had been present since Tony had first made eye contact with the kid after waking up.

Harry was the prerogative of Tony Stark, and if there was one thing that everyone knew about Starks, it was that they did not yield to the demands of others.

Starks were made of iron, _and iron did not bend_.

If used correctly, iron destroyed its enemies.

Something about knowing Harry was watching made Tony want to simply _be better_. It wasn't a feeling that was fully explained from the connection they had made while Raza had been threatening Yinsen. While the kid had been watching him work for the last few months, it suddenly felt different to know that he was watching. This felt like _more_ , now that Tony knew that the end was near, and now that the dangerous bits were closer at hand. Howard had never cared if Tony was in the workshop when he was doing dangerous experiments, always proceeding the same whether he knew Tony was there or not. Of course, Howard wasn't the _best_ example of how to be a parent.

Then again, science wasn't always about what _worked_. Sometimes what _didn't_ was just as important.

"He wasn't always this way," came a quiet voice, barely audible over Tony's own muttering. He didn't need to look to know the speaker was Harry. The disused hoarseness gave it away. The English accent was unexpected but comforting nonetheless, even if it was more Aunt Peggy than Edwin Jarvis. That accent had always meant _safety_ to Tony, long before he had given it to his youngest creation. Tony didn't let himself turn towards the kid, instead concentrating on connecting the various wires to their correct panels. Maybe Tony was projecting, but he had always found it easier to talk about things when he didn't have to look at a human face. Even years after growing up, he still found faces to be just weird. "He really did have a family that he loved and would do anything to protect. He was better then, when he had them to hold, when he still had Suyin to give him limits. Now he's angry all the time, like he wants to fight the world, because he would give anything to see them again."

Tony turned then. Harry was standing just within Tony's reach, half turned towards the cot where Yinsen was sleeping. The kid had his arms wrapped around himself. His eyes flicked towards Tony's face before his gaze returned to watching Yinsen. Harry had always been smaller than what had to be his age, but in that moment, he seemed so much smaller than he normally did, like something had been drained from him. His bony little shoulders were _slumped_ —like he was too tired to hold them up any longer. The fire in the still-lit forge cast moving shadows into the space around the kid, giving him a strange surreality, like he was no more substantial than a ghost.

"All of this has been a plan to see them again," Harry said. His eyes flicked towards Tony again. Then the kid took a deep breath and turned to face him completely. He dropped his arms to his sides, as his chin came up. It was the posture of a soldier delivering unwanted news to an officer and fully expecting to be punished for doing so. Tony wanted to _destroy_ whoever had taught the boy that pose, that _acceptance_ of an anticipated strike. "You need to understand that, sir. He's not going to follow your plan further than necessary to get his opportunity. He's not doing it to hurt you or to save you. It's just that his plan is not completely the same as yours. He does not plan to escape."

"What about you, kid?"

The question was out before Tony could process that he was going to ask it. Harry's expression shifted into confusion as he mouthed the question as if the words were too foreign to be understood. That didn't jive with what Tony had already observed of the kid who had always seemed to understand their guard-dogs regardless of what language they were speaking at the time.

"I'm going with you?"

Harry's tone was hesitant, unsure that he had come to the right conclusion. That was the moment it dawned on Tony that he had never explained the details of the escape plan to _Harry_. All this time, the kid had been helping him, taking care of the equipment, and fetching supplies, all while dealing with Yinsen's shit and whatever the Ten Rings wanted with him—nearly three months of trying to plan for every contingency while keeping said plans from their captors, and Tony had never thought to explain that he wasn't just leaving Harry here alone, that the plan had always been to get him out, too.

Worse than Tony's own stupidity was the realization that Harry had never spoken up about the exclusion, would _never have_ brought it up himself. That felt like a punch to the gut, just like when Tony had realized that the kid never complained about being hungry or thirsty and wouldn't help himself to either resource unless explicitly given a portion. _Of course_ Harry wouldn't have asked. Up until the little speech that he had just given, Harry hadn't spoken that Tony could remember and had barely even made any other kind of noise either. The kid never even asked for clarification on the few tasks they asked him to do rather than him just doing and trembling if they showed even the smallest hint of annoyance. That the kid was saying anything now was incredible and made something inside of Tony oozy in the same way he got when Mama treated him just like one of her kids.

"Yeah," Tony croaked, wanting to pull the kid into his arms like Rhodey would have done him in the same situation. Harry's eyes flicked over Tony's face, as if examining him for a lie. Harry took half a step towards him, barely more than a shuffle of his feet and a lean. His eyes were open very wide as they focused on Tony's mouth.

"Really?" he asked in a quiet and trembling voice. Harry stretched a hand out hesitantly as he swallowed hard enough that Tony could hear it. "You're really gonna take me with you?" Something seemed to occur to the kid then and the expression of blossoming hope crumbled as he suddenly pulled back into himself. His hands gripped his biceps as if he was trying to hug himself. Harry's eyes took on a slight twinkle in the forge-light. "Just out of the cave, right? Not to keep; not forever?"

"Can I show you something?" Tony asked instead of answering. He held out his hand, palm up, and waited. Harry blinked at him, mouthing his words again as if trying to understand them. Finally, he reached out to brush his fingertips over the ticklish center of Tony's palm. This time the connection felt more like wrapping chilled hands around a coffee mug than anything electric. The cave seemed to fade out of existence around them while his lab back in Malibu replaced it. Tony let his chosen memory play out, showing Harry what no one got to see nowadays: him lounging over Rhodey's chest as they cuddled on the lab's multi-sectional watching late night infomercials.

" _One of these days you'll get it, Tones,"_ Rhodey was saying in the memory. _"One day you'll understand why we—Jenny, Happy, and me, and now Pepper—do the things we do, why we're so quick to step between you and people telling you those things whenever possible. One day you'll understand just how much you are_ _ **not**_ _the monster they make you out to be. On that day, we're going to throw a fucking party, and maybe even invite the Ambassador herself, and all the niblings you have given me over the years will wear hats—"_

" _How are incorporeal beings going to wear hats?"_

" _I'm wearing one right now, Sir," JARVIS announced with stoic austerity. "It's a lovely shade of blue."_

" _Still corrupting my babies," Tony said, pressing his face into Rhodey's chest. "Platypus, what is it with you and corrupting young impressionable minds?"_

" _Sort of a habit," Rhodey replied. He scratched at Tony's scalp. "It started in a bathroom, just like my niblings. Besides, it's an uncle's job to spoil his nieces and nephews. Did you really think little things like them being different would change that?"_

" _People don't like different." Tony's statement is whispered like a confession. "They don't like broken either, no matter how useful they still are."_

" _You're not broken, Tones," Rhodey corrected fiercely. "That's Howard talking. And even if it wasn't, it doesn't matter because I've got you and I'm never going to let go. I'll watch the world burn first."_

The lab disappeared, but the cave didn't return like Tony had expected. Instead it was a generic hallway so boring it was practically painful. He could only blame the twenty-three years it had been since the event of the memory on why he didn't immediately recognize the hallway outside his old lab at MIT. Rhodey looked so young as he stared down at Tony in frustration.

" _I know you planted the blonde with the hot bod to distract me while you did whatever it was that blew up—"_

" _There was a complication with the experiment—"_

" _It_ _ **exploded**_ _, Tony."_

" _Nothing was destroyed except the equipment and I can replace—"_

" _Fuck the equipment. You could have died."_

" _Yeah, I know—and a terrible waste that would be. I am so close to figuring out that filtration problem. It's gonna be so much better than what dialysis machines are currently using. I just hope the stupid explosion didn't destroy the prototype—"_

" _Fucking hell, Tony," Rhodey interrupted again. Then he reached out, like he couldn't stop himself, and grabbed Tony by the arms as if he was going to shake him. His face was almost gray now and twisted into an expression that Tony didn't understand. It was like Rhodey was seeing his entire world ending, which couldn't be true because why did his platypus care that much about dialysis replacement? "Fuck prototypes and robots and drunk codes. While we're at it, fuck engines and circuit boards, too. Nothing you can create will ever be worth a tenth as much as you are, you fucking idiot."_

Tony blinked rapidly as his eyes struggled to adjust to the sudden darkness of the cave after the brightness of a well-lit college hallway. The first thing he focused on was Harry standing in front of him with his small, thin arms wrapped around himself as he shivered. The kid had never looked so tiny as he did in that moment, as he stood there crying without making a sound. Unable to resist any longer, no matter how much he had been wanting to respect the kid's boundaries, Tony knelt and pulled Harry into his arms. Harry's breath hitched as he tensed for a moment before going limp. Carefully and mentally channeling Jenny, Tony shifted Harry around until he could rest his chin on Harry's tangled curls. After several long moments, Tony felt fingers ( _so small, too small—how can anyone hurt someone so tiny?_ ) clutching at the tank top he was wearing. Harry made a choked sound like he wanted to sob but didn't know how to, like he had somehow never learned how.

"I've got you," Tony whispered, unconsciously swaying as he continued to hold the distressed boy. The scents of jasmine and lily-of-the-valley rose up as Harry's forehead brushed against the bare skin of Tony's chest, stirring a very old memory of Ana holding him the same way he now held Harry and for much the same reason. "I've got you, little bug, and I'm _never_ going to let you go."

-= LP =-

Tony watched as Yinsen picked up a weapon and ran out the door. Harry didn't even do that, his eyes fixed on the loading bar on the screen of the ancient computer as if willing it to go faster. After the breakdown last night (maybe early this morning? Time was a slippery creature without a way of verifying its passage), the kid had retreated back into silence. He was just as helpful as before, but Tony could tell that something was off. It wasn't hard to guess that Harry probably didn't truly believe that Tony would be taking him with when this is successful, that Harry likely thought that having him lag behind while Tony eliminated any potential threats was just an excuse to leave him behind completely.

It _hurt_ that Harry didn't trust him to keep a promise, but at the same time, Tony had grown up with people promising things and then not following through. Even when the reasons weren't openly malicious, that kind of lesson tended to stick. Nothing about Harry's behavior suggested that people only broke promises to him due to circumstances outside of their control.

' _No more,'_ Tony vowed silently as he waited the precious seconds the download was taking and knowing that Yinsen was mostly likely well on his way to seeing his family again, to borrow Harry's phrasing.

Harry didn't look at him as he unhooked the cables that had connected the suit with the computer. His tiny hands were nimble and sure as they worked, knowledgeable in a way that Tony had never seen another child's be, not even when he met other child prodigies. Even accounting for the potential acquisition of technical knowledge through whatever ability was tied to the memory-touch thing, Harry's skill was unexpected because muscle memory had to be involved.

"Remember, Harry," Tony said, choosing to interrupt his thoughts. Harry flicked his gaze up before dropping it again. Normally, Tony wouldn't force this particular issue—Tesla knows that he fucking hated it when people do it to him—but this wasn't something that he could just leave alone. "I need your eyes up here, Har-bear." Tony waited until Harry had raised his face again even if the kid didn't seem to be focusing on it. He added it to his mental list of things to get checked out. "I'm not leaving without you. Thirty-five seconds. That's how far I need you to lag behind. Thirty-five seconds and not any more. We both leave or neither of us do. Together or not at all. Got it?"

Harry nodded sharply, dropping his gaze immediately to the floor. Tony silently cursed, because they didn't have the time it would take to convince Harry that Tony was serious. It could be resolved later, when they had gotten out of here, when they were back home with JARVIS and the bots, just _later_. Tony just had to first guarantee that they had a later and the longer he stood still, the less time they would have in the air. That would mean a longer walk in the desert without supplies, something that Tony was confident that he could do. But what about Harry?

"This was always the plan, Stark," Yinsen told him when Tony caught up. The man was already close to death. He was also confirming everything that Harry had told him. "My family is dead, but don't—" Yinsen grabbed the pauldron of the armor to pull Tony down. " _Don't leave yours here_. You have to get Harry out. It's more important than you could ever know."

"Already on it, Yinsen," Tony assured. Yinsen moved his hand to pat Tony's cheek. Then he was gone, nothing more than an empty shell. A quiet choking sound made Tony raise his eyes to Harry who was staring at Yinsen with eyes wide and terrified. Tony realized that as young as Harry must be, that this was likely the first time he had seen a dead body. _Let this be the first_. Tony whistled the same sharp tone he used to get his bots' attention when they were being rowdy. Instantly, Harry's gaze snapped to his face instead of Yinsen's. "I don't know about you, little man, but I'm ready to blow this popsicle stand. What do you say?"

Harry hesitated, his gaze shifting to something off to the side before returning to Tony's face. He swallowed several times in quick succession. Tony could see the trembling Harry was trying to suppress as the boy opened his mouth only to close it again. With a sudden insight akin to the kind that usually mean losing a few days in his workshop, Tony interrupted the visibly building panic.

"Hey, no," Tony said softly. "Don't worry about trying to force it if they won't come. There's other ways of getting the point across. We'll work on it, okay? But for right now, all I need is a nod." Harry's breath hitched but his nod was much more enthusiastic than it had been. "Okay. So one final point to make and then we're free to fly away home."

"Rhodey," Harry said without any difficulty. Understanding completely, Tony nodded and got to his feet. There was no way that Rhodey had stopped looking for him, if for no other reason than to bring home a body for cremation. While most of the stockpile of his weapons had been cheerfully made into completely useless scraps over the last few months, there was some still to be handled.

Time to light a signal fire for his platypus to see.

-= LP =-  
 _To be continued in Part 03: Twine_  
-= LP =-


	3. Twine

**Author's Note(s):** Tidbit for this chapter is that I did not set out to write Harry as having autism. Like I normally do, I set out to show a severe case of abuse that had ripple effects throughout the rest of the survivor's life. It wasn't until I was writing this chapter and James' narrative where he _insisted_ on his interpretation of things (yes, I argue with my characters; shh, all writers have a little madness) that I went back through with my handy-dandy diagnostic list and started checking. Turns out, Rhodey was right as usual (as Tony would say).

 **Challenge/Competition Block** :  
 **Stacked with:** Not Commonwealth; Sky's the Limit; Terms of Service; By Any Other Name; Neurodivergent (Autism)  
 **Representation:** Tony Stark; Asexuality/QPR; Military Personnel/Nurses/Heroes; Starks/Rhodes  
 **Bonus Challenge(s):** Esbat; Fire & Fold; _Second Verse (Unicorn)_ ; _Second Verse (Wabi Sabi)_ ; Second Verse (Middle Name); _Second Verse (Nightingale)_ ; Second Verse (Tomorrow's Shade); Second Verse (Unwanted Advice); Second Verse (Nontraditional); Second Verse (Found Family); _Second Verse (Cli_ _o's Conclusion)_ ; Second Verse (Zucchini Bread); Second Verse (Some Beach)  
 **Word Count** : 4780

-= LP =-  
 _The Purpose of Aeries_  
 **Daedalus Bound**  
Part 03: Twine  
-= LP =-  
 _We can't afford to be innocent  
Stand up and face the enemy  
It's a do or die situation  
We will be invincible_  
– Pat Benatar, "Invincible"  
-= LP =-

Two minutes of flight is all that they managed. It was barely enough to get them out of the mountains and back to the sand. From there, it seemed like just a lot of twos and its multiples. Harry lasted four hours before Tony noted him starting to waver, another two before he consented to letting Tony carry him. They managed another two hours before the sun set. Tony estimated they had managed about eighteen miles from the spot they had crash-landed after their escape; they could afford to rest without major risk of any pursuit catching them.

They managed only a couple of hours of rest before Tony decided that the cold was too much, possible an even greater threat to his tiny companion than anything else. All through the night, Tony plodded over the sands with Harry ( _so light, too light, did no one ever feed him?_ ) in a monkey hold against his chest and an ever-watchful full moon above him, reminding him of the quiet nights he had spent as a child with Wilkes talking nonsense to that same moon. Occasionally, Harry would insist on walking, usually after a unexpected brush of their skin had released a burst of Tony's darker memories, but for the most part, Tony was successful in getting the kid to at least doze.

Even in sleep, Harry was tense at being within touching distance and his fingers clutched a fistful of Tony's shirt like he was afraid of letting go.

It was about two hours after the zenith the next day that a pair of helicopters flew overhead. They both had the markings of the United States Air Force. More importantly, the figure that hopped out of one of them before it had fully landed was undeniably familiar. Tony's knees trembled as relief flooded him at the sight of Rhodey leading the group running across the sand. They gave completely, sending both Tony and his precious burden to the ground, as Rhodey got close enough to get a grip on Tony's shoulder. Ever loyal, Rhodey went to his knees with Tony.

The feel of Rhodey's hand on the back of his neck bringing their foreheads together made Tony want nothing more than to blurt out a wildly inappropriate proposition like he would have back in college, even though he knows that Rhodey would never take him up on it. Of course Rhodey wouldn't; Rhodey understood what the offer really was, even if he didn't like the reason that Tony felt more comfortable offering sexual favors than _just asking_ to be held. That's because Rhodey was fucking awesome.

"Next time, you ride with me," Rhodey ordered, startling a disbelieving huff out of Tony despite his exhaustion. Of course, Rhodey would make a joke about that absolutely _stupid_ disagreement in place of spouting the sentimental mushiness that gave Tony hives on the best days. Tony wanted to lean forward and rest his head on Rhodey's shoulder, to let himself hide just a bit in the safety of his platypus like he had countless times over the years. The memory of each incidence suddenly seemed as clear as if they were happening right at that moment.

Tony noticed then that when he had fallen, he had shifted his hand from Harry's clothed back to his bare neck in an instinctive effort to support his head. Shifting his hand back finally drew Rhodey's attention to the trembling boy.

"Tones," Rhodey asked hesitantly, "what did you do?"

"Well, you know how I love souvenirs, right?" Tony asked flippantly. Rhodey gave him a flat look that he had to have learned from either Jenny or Mama. Even without seeing it, Harry flinched closer. Tony gave him a reassuring squeeze before trying another angle. "Finders, keepers?"

Rhodey sighed.

"You get to explain," was all he said.

 _I've got your back_ , was what Tony understood, because it was Rhodey and that was what he always meant.

And nowhere was safer that with a Rhodes backing him.

-= LP =-

It was with the medical staff that they experienced their first problem. All through the flight to Base Ops, no one tried to separate them, despite how it might have been safer to fully strap in for the hour it took. One of the benefits of being a lieutenant colonel with the kind of experience that he did was when Rhodey cleared breaks from protocol, the rank and file listened. But rank and impressive field experience meant little in the face of Medical; Rhodey's glares had nothing on the tenacity of doctors who operate on patients while being shot at.

Harry paled when the nurse started directing him to the other end of the hallway, but even looking caught between hyperventilating and not breathing at all, he went without a complaint or fight. The boy dropped his gaze to the ground and even through the shifting bodies of people moving between them, Tony could see the tension running through his thin shoulders.

Tony had decided in that cave that it was a good idea to ask what Howard would do in any situation that might come up with Harry, because it would an excellent source of wisdom. So what would Howard do? Howard would have let the separation happen, knowing that they both needed to be checked out and that the chances of physical harm was slim. Howard would have told Harry to buck up and that there was nothing to be afraid of, to stop being a weakling and be strong like Captain America. Howard would a lecture ready about how Starks are made of iron and iron does not bend. Howard would have let Harry be led away to be treated on his own, possibly even passing the kid's care off to someone else.

"Not too far away," Tony ordered sharply enough that even Rhodey's back straightened. The medical staff immediately started protesting, trying to argue about privacy and the need for treatment. But Harry had raised his eyes towards Tony's face again and his half-hopeful expression was louder than any argument they could ever make. "Together, buddy, or not at all. Rhodey, honeybear, sweet love of my life—"

"I'm not giving you my phone until you've had at least a cursory exam and a shower," Rhodey interrupted, because he was a rude, rude, _rude_ person. Also _mean_. Rhodey ran a hand through Tony's hair when he opened his mouth to tell Rhodey that, though. "If you promise to do that without antagonizing Doc too much, I'll go loom over Lt. McKenzie like you were about to ask. Ambassador knows what terrible lies about medics you've told the kid already. You didn't teach him the biting thing, did you?"

"Rhodey," Tony whispered, suddenly overwhelmed by everything because wasn't that just like Rhodey? All bossy and grossly sentimental and just _perfect_. Tony reached up to clutch at the combat uniform jacket that Rhodey was wearing. Without a child between them this time, Rhodey immediately pulled Tony in, tucking his head beneath his chin and using one hand to cup the back of Tony's neck. Over the many, many years, a lot of things had changed, but the feel and scent of Rhodey would always mean home to Tony. Nowhere else would ever be safer than any place with Rhodey beside him. Tony's hand tightened around his fistful of cloth. " _Rhodey_."

"I've got you, Tones," Rhodey returned, matching both volume and tone. "You're safe. It's over. I've got you, and we'll get through the rest."

"Harry," Tony said, forcing himself to pull away. He couldn't fall apart, not until he had the kid somewhere secure, somewhere protected by more than his awesome platypus' scowl. "Rhodey, I need—"

"A cursory exam and a shower," Rhodey interrupted again. Tony scowled at him. "You need to be cleared by medical to return stateside and you'll rest better if you wash off the grime. You _know_ that back home will be a media circus, and you can't just tell the reporters to fuck off like you usually do, man."

Rhodey tilted his slightly towards the spot where Harry stood, still watching and still with the nurse's hand on his shoulder. Tony's mind provided him with the likelihood of Harry's oversized shirt moving out of the way of skin-to-skin contact. Tony steeled himself before deliberately meeting Rhodey's eyes.

"Harry's mine," Tony said, ignoring the way his stomach was twisting itself into knots and threatening to rebel despite being two days empty of anything but bile. " _He's mine."_

"Got it, Tones," Rhodey replied evenly. He cupped one of Tony's cheeks while removing the hand that had refused to release the hold it had on his uniform. "Cursory exam with blood and saliva for testing and then a shower. I'll stick with the kid, get him through the same. When we get back, I'll let you steal my phone. I'm sure J is as eager to hear your voice as you are to hear his."

"I need to get J started on—"

"And you _can_ ," Rhodey interrupted _yet again_. At this rate, Tony was going to need to tell Mama. She would never tolerate her children being so rude. Rhodey pressed his thumb into the palm of Tony's hand before pulling back just enough to stroke the area instead. "I will let you go nuts with my phone and J and anything else you want, but I have to insist on the exam and shower _first_. No matter how much you fuss, you still need those things, and the longer you put them off, the longer it will be before you get to start whatever it is you're going to do with J. And the longer I argue about this with you, the longer it is before Harry gets checked out and clean, and you're a genius, man, so I know you know what else is being held up here."

"He doesn't complain," Tony said, "so you have to pay attention. Because Harry doesn't complain, even when he needs to or when he should, and, and, and—"

"Hey, Tones, you need to breathe," Rhodey interrupted and Tony definitely needed to tell Mama about that, because _rude_. Jenny might even suggest _lines_. Rhodey squeezed his hand before pressing it back to his chest and taking a breath as an example. "I have experience wrangling koala-cats. I know what to look for and I promise to restrain myself from corrupting him in the fifteen to twenty minutes it will take you to get seen and clean. It will be hard, but if that's what you need, then that's what I'll do."

"That's why you're my favorite."

"Uh-huh, sure, whatever," Rhodey said with an eyeroll and a shooing motion. "Don't bite the medical personnel this time."

" _One time_. It was _one time_ and I'm telling you, the woman was _evil_."

"Yes, so you've said, and you also had nothing to do with that tofu bunny."

" _Mean_. Why do I put up with you?"

"I'm your _favorite_."

-= LP =-

James waited until Tony had be led into his exam room—letting the genius out of his sight so soon after finally getting him back was harder to do than James was willing to admit outside his own head—before he turned towards the child hovering at the other end of the hall. At just a quarter of an inch over five feet, Lt. Loretta McKenzie was the shortest person staffing the base currently. The boy barely came up to mid-thigh on her. In the bright lights of the medical building, he looked washed out and like Tony, exhausted. Also like Tony, there were patches of sunburn and bruises visible under the soot and grime.

But it was the eyes that did him in.

Harry's eyes were large and wide in the way that refugee children's often were but something about their emerald depths seemed hauntingly familiar. They moved over Rhodey's face as if looking for a specific thing. It was when they settled on his mouth that it hit him.

' _Harry's mine.'_ Of course, that's how Tony would phrase it. Even after all these years and all their efforts, Tony still thought of himself as broken to the point of being alien. If he could go back in time, knowing what he had picked up over the decades, James would have taken the opportunity to actually punch Howard Stark when he had the chance.

"Let's get you seen, little man," James said, ushering the kid into his exam room.

The kid took the opportunity to move away from McKenzie, instantly crowding as close to James' side as possible. It was such a Tony move that he was half expecting the kid to start babbling like Tony did when he was nervous but hadn't worked himself into a panic attack. Instead the boy stayed quiet, like he had been the entire time, and that was much worse. Silence from Tony always meant that he was crumbling completely. Silence from Tony always meant that he had reached the point when speech was literally impossible. James knew that Tony knew several sign languages for those times, but who knew if the kid had anything like that in place? The kid looked young enough that he might not even know how to write.

As McKenzie got prepped what she needed for a basic medical exam, James focused on getting the kid settled on the exam table. It was reflex to run his hand through Harry's hair like he used to do to Tony when he had no other option than dragging him to the campus nurse. For a brief moment, the memory of dragging Tony from a smoke-filled lab was so strong that terror-fueled rage made his heart pound and his mind smooth out like he was in combat. Then the kid flinched into a protective curl, shattering the memory as he pulled far enough away that James' hand hovered above his hair instead of being buried in it. James' heart felt like it was breaking all over again as Harry stilled like he didn't dare to even breathe, like he expected to be punished for pulling away from an unexpected touch. That was worse than seeing dents in the bots' frames after the Stone debacle or listening to Tony's exhausted rebuttal to Peggy Carter's warning against recklessness while grieving.

Not that he wasn't going to already but seeing how the kid flinched away from comfort solidified James' resolve to back whatever play Tony was going to make concerning the kid. Hell, if Tony didn't insist on taking the kid home with him, James knew that Jenny and her partner Emily were discussing the possibility of children. There was no way that he would let the kid get lost in the system. James would take him in himself first, even if it meant taking an immediate discharge. He hadn't considered _that_ since the whole Bain situation a decade ago.

"So, Tony called you 'Harry'," James said. The kid uncurled enough to glance up at James through his lashes. James tried to smile reassuringly. "That's not a nickname, right? He has a habit of giving everyone nicknames, especially if he likes you."

"Platypus," the boy whispered in acknowledgement. James chuckled. Of freaking course Tony had passed on that information. Then Harry leaned forward, looking for all the world like he was steeling himself against something. The kid started talking, obviously repeating something that had to have come from Tony. "Nowhere safer than with a Rhodes, especially the giant ones, an-and even the jerks like Joey. No flamingos allowed; Jarvis hates flamingos." He swallowed hard before continuing and with every syllable the tremble in his limbs grew a little more visible. "I have no clue how either of you could be so fucking blind that you can't see that Tony is a damn treasure. You're so busy keeping your golden hero on his pedestal that you're ignoring the vibranium that you had right in front of you."

"That's a very specific quote, little man," James said, measuring his tone to keep it even despite being unnerved. He ran his hands down Harry's arms, torn between worry about how thin those arms were and the previously half-forgotten rage he had felt then. He had to stay in the moment for the kid; he could vent to Jenny later. He took a deep breath, letting his mind go smooth. Harry twisted his fingers together but mimicked him the same way Tony would. Like he would with Tony, James carefully took both of Harry's wrists in one of his hands while running the other through Harry's hair. The memories of every time he had done the same to Tony threatened to overwhelm him for a moment before his mind returned to combat smoothness again. "You know, Tony likes to make up stories about that trip instead of telling the truth. So it's surprising that you know that, Harry. Did he tell you who I am?"

"Rhodey," Harry said. "No Eym or Jarvis anymore but Rhodey will never stop looking. Rhodey would let the world burn first."

"I would," James agreed easily because it was true even if it was a weird thing for Tony to have shared. It sounded even weirder in the slight English accent that coated Harry's young voice. It was close to how James had always imagined Tony sounding when he was really young due to Jarvis' influence. "Do you have anyone like that, Harry? A mom and dad, maybe?"

"Dead, boy," Harry said after another hard swallow. He was still shivering and using other people's words, so James took a risk and gave the kid's hair the same kind of gentle tug that always settled Tony down the fastest. Harry didn't even seem to notice as he continued his flat recitation. "Crashed their car into a tree while drinking because they had been stuck with you, and who can blame them? Such a horrid, little freak."

James could almost picture the type of person who would say such a thing. His mind constructed the image of a tall blonde practically spitting the words through thin lips that had been painted a washed-out coral. The woman looked like one of those housewives who had taken to mimicking Pepper's polished style but could never quite manage it because they lacked her polished poise. James could hear how grating the woman's voice would have been as she hissed the words in a whisper-shout as if worried that someone would hear; he could _feel_ how tight her hand would have been wrapped around his arm and the bite of her nails as they pressed through cloth to reach his skin.

"Col. Rhodes, I'm ready to begin," McKenzie said, breaking through the thought.

James blinked to clear the rest before carefully moving to the side to give her room to work. He watched as she went through the basic exam with efficient thoroughness and showed no signs of getting lost in memories, even in the moments when they seem to be swarming James before his mind when battle-smooth again. Decades of dealing with unexpected craziness, not all of which could be blamed on anything related to Tony Stark's brand of mad genius, had given James the ability to analyze situations in depth on the fly. By the time James was escorting the kid to the showers with a set of the smallest clothes they could find on the base, he thought he had a solid grasp on the situation.

Harry had an active mutation and Tony _knew_. Harry had been in the same pit that Tony had been in for the last three months, though Harry had most likely been there for longer than that. Even before that hellhole, Harry had been with people who probably made Howard Stark look like Father of the Year. The first priority on placing the kid would be to locate previous guardians, which would be made easier by tracing the potential presence of an X gene. Tony would fight it, but if the test results are marked as positive for the X gene, James knew that the government would seek custody of Harry and even his koala-cat wouldn't be able to successful fight the entirety of the government on a battleground they control, but Tony had more than enough resources to rabbit with the kid and bots in tow. If that happened, James knew where he would stand, but there was an easier solution at hand.

"Hey, little man," James said as he crouched down to Harry's level in front of the door to the showers. "Do you think you can wash yourself? I need to call a friend about something."

"In and out, boy," Harry replied with a nod. "Don't waste water."

The boy disappeared into the room before James could counter the repeated words. His heart lurched in ways that it hadn't since he had spent hours eavesdropping on Tony talking to Dummy. A part of him wanted to chase after Harry for no other reason than to let him know to take all the time he wanted. The rest of him knew there were more important battles to be fought at this particular moment.

It was time to call in the big guns.

"Good morning, Col. Rhodes," JARVIS greeted as the call immediately went through. "Or rather, 'good evening'. What may I do to assist you?"

"Tony's bringing home a stray, J." James paused to let him process the implications of that. Knowing his nephew, James didn't hesitate to offer what he knew would be the AI's first desire. "Do you have eyes on me? Tony should be in a room down the hall. He's _supposed to be_ giving samples so that he can be certified as clear of contaminants while I watch the kid."

"Sir is currently arguing with medical personnel over the low-level radiation he is currently emitting. He would benefit from a third party weighing in on his claim of it being perfectly safe."

"Is that his opinion or yours?"

"While I intend to reassess once he is within range of proper sensors, his claims do not seem exaggerated to his usual extent. I am more concerned with the fact the power source appears to be embedded in his chest. I am unaware of any medical procedure which calls for that. Sir does appear to be fine if stressed. You mentioned that Sir had collected a stray?"

"In the room beyond the door nearest me."

"The boy is—" JARVIS paused, uncharacteristically unsure. "He is very small. He appears to have not received adequate nutritional intake for an excessive period. Is there adequate filtration on the water? Col. Rhodes, I do not presume to give you orders, but the boy is currently behaving very much like he needs an immediate boost to his glucose levels. Preferably before he fills up on water."

"I'll get right on it, but first I need you to monitor the lab results for the bio samples they took from the kid. Protocol NIMH, under my authorization, if you would, J."

"Understood, Col. Rhodes," JARVIS acknowledged. "The lee of the stone is prepared. I am also taking the liberty of beginning the necessary paperwork for Sir to bring home his stray. If you have no further immediate need for my assistance, I must insist that you see about providing substance for the boy." JARVIS paused again as if uncertain. "And Sir, as he is officially requesting coffee as he's headed in your direction."

"Tony's going to want to talk to you in a bit."

"I would be amendable to that," JARVIS said before continuing in a more scolding tone. "Col. Rhodes, I really must insist that some form of rations be provided posthaste. While undeniably refreshing given the climate of the region, water cannot meet the caloric needs for anyone, let alone a growing child who evinces all the hallmarks of extended privation."

"Is that a polite way of saying 'feed the boy already'?"

"If I must be so blunt, _yes_ ," JARVIS agreed.

"You're awfully bossy for an AI, you know."

"I am as I was created."

"Like father, like son."

"Just so."

-= LP =-

The room was crowded with the second bed that had been shoved into it. The plan had been to let both Tony and Harry have their own beds and James would return to his own bunk. At least, that was the plan for the still defensive medical personnel who hadn't been happy with Tony's increasingly vocal refusal of treatment beyond what was required to be cleared for return to the States. James could have told them that there would be no way that there was no way it was going to happen. The visible relief on the kid's face when he had spotted Tony waiting made it clear that separating the two would have been a bad idea, especially with the way Tony's eyes had lit up with a similar relief when he had dragged his eyes away from James' phone (and whatever conspiracy he had been hatching with JARVIS) to check if the kid was out of the shower yet.

Relief had gone through James as well as he realized that he wasn't going to need any of the backup plans he had been idly preparing in his head. Tony wasn't going to let the kid any more now than he had wanted to earlier. Though James was still going to contact Jenny and Emily. It was only fair that they meet their newest nephew, and they needed more leeway on scheduling to fly across the country than Tony did.

Watching Harry and Tony curling up in bed together after they had finished the trays sent from the mess made the hard knot of tension that had been in James' chest since he had arrived minutes too late to find protect Tony or even see him being taken. Finally, he could breathe again. Tony was back where James could keep him safe, which was all that mattered even after all these years. Over a hundred and twenty combat missions spread out over eighteen years and he had never been as afraid as he had been when he had spotted that puddle of still-wet blood besides Tony's broken phone. Now he couldn't settle to sleep, haunted by the irrational feeling that if he closed his eyes for too long, the genius would disappear again.

So he angled the medical table so that he could see both the door and the bed with the freshly rescued duo on it and proceed to disassemble and clean his service weapon. His phone with its built-in connection to JARVIS played power ballads from the eighties. He could keep watch for a while, just for tonight and just to settle his nerves.

An alert sounded from his phone, drawing his attention away from his meditative motions. Setting things down, James checked the message. He stared at the information for a long moment before calling JARVIS directly.

"Hello, Col. Rhodes," JARVIS greeted. "Let me start by assuring you that the biometric information is accurate as of the mandatory physical for his first year of schooling. The physician who did the physical noted the irregularity you are seeing but there is no record of anything being recommended."

"No way in hell that Harry _simple refused to eat_ enough to make him the size of a child half his age and nothing was recommended," James countered. JARVIS made a noncommittal sound. "Who are these people? What are the chances of them making a play to get Harry back?"

"Irrelevant, Col. Rhodes," JARVIS said, his voice taking on a flatter, more mechanical note. "The paperwork I have compiled will check out."

"Do I want to know why you've phrased it like that?"

"Most likely not," JARVIS said, his tone back to normal. James chanced a glance over the sleepers to see Harry rubbing his forehead against Tony's chest in his sleep. The kid's knuckles were white around his fistful of Tony's shirt, even in sleep. "Just bring them home."

"That sounds like a good plan," James agreed. He sent the file on to the base superiors, knowing that they would take care of arranging the transport. No one wanted Tony Stark on a military base longer than absolutely necessary, military contractor or not. There was too much of a risk that he would uncover any secrets they tried to hide. Then James returned to servicing his weapon, letting the knowledge that tomorrow night they'd be back in Malibu settle him enough to finally sleep.

-= LP =-  
 _To be continued in Part 04: Wax_  
-= LP =-


	4. Wax

**Author's Note(s):** Unfortunately, the finishing of this chapter and the readthrough means that my goal of posting the final chapter on my birthday is not going to happen. I'm going to be out all day tomorrow and won't be able to post until the 22nd at the earliest. Also, as a warning, Phil's an idiot, as he does tend to be off and on throughout the MCU. May will eventually sort him out (not in this fic, but later), but here? Still a full fledge SHIELD idiot.

 **Challenge/Competition Block** :  
 **Representation:** Tony Stark; Asexuality; Military Personnel/Nurses/Heroes; Starks/Rhodes  
 **Bonus Challenge(s):** Second Verse (Wabi Sabi); Second Verse (Middle Name); Second Verse (Nightingale); Second Verse (Tomorrow's Shade); Second Verse (Unwanted Advice); Second Verse (Nontraditional); Second Verse (Found Family); Second Verse (Clio's Conclusion)  
 **Word Count** : 4158

-= LP =-  
 **The Purpose of Aeries**  
 _Daedalus Bound_  
Part 04: Wax  
-= LP =-  
"Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior." – Abraham Maslow  
-= LP =-

Virginia "Pepper" Potts was used to many things due to the course of her career. She had survived attaining an MBA while working a fulltime job under what had to be some of the sexist conditions in existence. She had clawed her way through the ranks of SI's admin departments until the day when a refused proposition and snapped quip about his signature had Tony Stark making her his personal assistant. Then she had deal with the snide comments about how she had earned and _kept_ her position while essentially doing the admin side of CEO of a quickly growing international multibillion dollar company. While her boss had never repeated his proposition or any of the sexist commentary of her previous employers (in fact, had never expressed anything other than being impressed with her work), the highly conservative businessmen that work had forced her to interact with hadn't been so egalitarian. She had initially just accepted it as she always had; it was just another facet of being a woman moving in a quote/unquote man's world.

Then one of them had made a crack about her to _Tony_. The man had often made her think he was incapable of being serious, that he was just an overgrown child who needed a babysitter to make sure he didn't hide in his lab engineering his business down the drain. Yet in that moment all humor had evaporated like fog in the heat of the sun. Instead of seeing Tony Stark, billionaire genius who had a terrible habit of picking up the most annoying men and women for a single night and letting his bots run amuck in whatever workshop he was living out of, she was seeing the man that had expanded Stark Industries from just a weapons and ammunitions company to _the_ leading technology company with employees in seventeen countries, dominating in six different fields. The man who had coolly ripped the latest _good old boy_ trying to put the uppity girl in her place into pieces was the face that even she would have called the Merchant of Death. She had actually worried about having to cover up a murder for a moment.

Instead, she witnessed just how _ruthless_ a Stark could be when they knew they had the high ground. Pepper had done her homework before taking the job at SI. Starks had always been very good at destroying things, iron mongers to core and for countless generations before one of them decided to make a company out of it. Tony had never been like that, had always pushed the medical and communication tech before the weapons; he collected biologists and botanists like midwestern housewives had Beanie Babies, and made the products both profitable and _affordable_. He had never been one of the corrupted fat cats that made her want to stab something with a fountain pen. Yet in that moment, he was absolutely terrifying.

Instead of working out a partial merger, they had walked out of that boardroom with a hostile takeover.

Only once they were back in his personal office did Tony turn his ire towards her. He wasn't upset with her exactly, though. His anger was entirely for how she had just been accepting the prejudice as the cost of doing business.

"My godmother once said something," he said, glaring out the window with his arms crossed. "Everyone in the world will try to tell you that the status quo is just the way it has to be, regardless of how _wrong_ it is, and they will do anything to get you to move out of their way. It is your job to plant yourself like a tree in their way and tell them in uncertain terms ' _no, you move.'_ " He had turned then, making an effort to actually look at her instead of over her shoulder like he normally did. His eyes had been bright with fury. "You may not realize your value, Ms. Potts, but I do, and lemme tell you something: you are _exactly_ what this company needs. Taking over the world is a job for heels and a killer strut. Stop tip-toeing."

"That's easier said than done," she had snapped. "Unless they're making cracks or asking for coffee, I'm invisible."

"Then make them to regret not paying attention."

Pepper had taken the advice to heart. She had finally noticed that not only did Tony appreciate her efforts and opinions, he would back any plan she brought to him. By the time she had sent him off to demonstrate the Jericho missile, she was CEO in everything but name and Tony didn't even read any paperwork she told him to sign. She still had to throw out his one-night stands, but it was weirdly something she enjoyed. She got a chance to evaluate them herself, which was sometimes a good thing because Tony had a habit of sleeping with extremely smart people. She wouldn't admit outside her mind that she also enjoyed the opportunity to be bitchy in a way that wouldn't jeopardize _her_ company.

The point of the matter is that Pepper Potts was not a woman to be trifled with if one didn't want to face her wrath. She had learned _ruthlessness_ from the best and she had learned audacity through living as a single woman in New York. Morningside Heights may not have been as rough as other neighborhoods, but it hadn't been easy. Pepper may not _like_ violence, but she had learned certain things were necessary.

Watching Tony leading _an actual child_ out of the plane that brought him back after his rescue, Pepper was ready to beat him with one of her Louboutin heels despite how he must have suffered as a captive the last few months. If he tried to have her toss out the kid like he did his paramours, she might just _kill_ him. She was fairly certain that she could make a case for justifiable homicide, too, but she would have to discreetly talk to Jennifer Walters in Legal to be certain.

Then the trio from the plane got close enough that Pepper could see more of the child than simply _child_. She could see how his deeply green eyes had widened as he caught sight of her. She watched as his tiny hand tightened around a fistful of Tony's slacks and how Tony's hand had dropped automatically to his head to comfort him. The anger drained away. Of course, Tony _wouldn't_ do that.

"Did you miss your long-lost boss, Ms. Potts?"

"My aim should improve now that you're back, Mr. Stark," she quipped back. Then she looked down around Tony's knees. The boy was looking at her through his lashes, a trick she knew would make it harder to see where his eyes was focus. Pepper raised a hand to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. As expected, his eyes followed the motion even as he stilled like a mouse before a snake. Pepper snapped her gaze to Tony's carefully-blanked face. At his slight nod, the urge to take her shoe to someone returned.

Pepper Potts was going to make whoever had made that little boy afraid of moving hands _regret_ not paying attention to basic human decency.

"Where do we need to stop after the hospital, Mr. Stark?"

"No hospitals," Tony countered, rushing on when she opened her mouth to argue and urging their entire group towards the limo with Happy waiting besides it. "I've been away too long. I need do take care a few things at SI before we can head home, but first there is something we absolutely need—"

"Oh, god, no, absolutely not—"

"We need American burgers, possibly with cheese but maybe not. I don't know what Harry is gonna want on his or if he can handle cheese—I should know that, right? That's something we'll figure out as we work our way around the world in cuisine." Tony gestured for Pepper to slide in first and for Rhodey to follow her. Only after Tony and the boy (apparently named Harry) had settled across from them did Tony continue. "But I need a general press conference for when we get to SI. We have to make that announcement ASAP. I'm not kidding. It has to be today; tomorrow may be too late."

"Hey, Tones," Rhodey interrupted, when it seemed like Tony would have spiraled into one of his moods where he ended up distracting himself. Like magic, Tony immediately stopped his babbling. Pepper flicked her gaze down to Tony's side, where Harry had curled himself into as small a space as humanly possible. She frowned when she saw that he was still watching her, only to see him flinch at the expression. "Breathe, man. What announcement? Why can't it wait?"

"The Weapons Division announcement," Pepper answered, moving her attention off the child who was apparently terrified of her. "It was our pet project. We were going to phase out the Weapons Division entirely with the Jericho and AWE being the last designs we produced. We were going to announce it as part of the purchase negotiations and then the renegotiations on our standard production contracts. Obviously, the announcement didn't proceed as planned." She turned to Tony. "You know if you push the announcement there'll be claims of PTSD, right? There will be discussion that you are only doing this as a reaction to being kidnapped."

"I'm still the majority shareholder—"

"They will push to _lock you out_ ," she interrupted, earning a glare from Tony. She rolled her eyes in response. "Idiots. I'm surrounded by idiots. If they lock you out, you jeopardize the energy initiative and you _know_ that the medical tech would be next. The board has always hated the at-cost policy, especially when they see companies like Pym Tech and Rand marking up their products for fifteen times that."

"They had my weapons, Pep. I can't, can't—I can't—"

"Audit the department," Rhodey commanded as Tony struggled to breathe around the idea. "Shut down the Weapons Division for a complete audit, which will buy you time to do the negotiations on the new contracts. An audit will probably cause less of a panic among the shareholders and the illusion of maintaining the status quo will keep the brass off our backs long enough to get through the review."

Pepper swallowed around the tears that threatened to overtake her again like they had when JARVIS had announced that Tony had been found and was officially on his way home. She had a feeling that the feeling wasn't going to go away for a while. She buried all of it under the need to strategize as she sent out the necessary announcement to gather the press before they got to the LA headquarters.

Through it all, she made an effort to ignore the child in their midst. It didn't work and she knew it. It was had to miss how he watched her while unobtrusively clinging to Tony. It was hard to miss how he flinched every time she snapped or frowned. All of it made the quivery ball of worry and doubt in her gut solidify into something with teeth.

By the time, they were pulling up to the back of the main building to drop off Harry and Rhodey, it wouldn't have taken much to prompt her to _bite_.

Pepper Potts slid out of the limo after Tony who was being pulled away by Obadiah's propriety hold. She followed the pair of businessmen with a killer strut. Her heels were sensible even if they were high enough that she was walking on the balls of her feet more than the rest of her foot.

She did not tip-toe into the building.

-= LP =-

Phil Coulson knew a dismissal when he heard one. He also knew when to push and when a nudge would suffice. From the way Stark's assistant had politely smiled while taking his card but not even looking at it, he knew that he would have to come back at a later time. He already had an appointment with Stark's CFO for the next day. He could afford to be patient in debriefing Stark for now.

It was just the first day since Stark's suspiciously miraculous escape.

Phil slipped away from the crowded press hall. Intel on the building had a small breakroom located a short distance away, meant for SI executives to prepare. If he was lucky either that was where Rhodes was waiting for Stark and he could get a third party debrief. If he was really lucky, it would be empty and Phil could plant a few bugs for future use.

Instead, he found a small child sitting at a café-style table. The boy appeared to be three, maybe an exceptionally dainty four, and was kicking his feet idly as he devoured a hamburger. He didn't seem to be chewing more than a few times before swallowing. He was also half-hunched over the meal like he was worried that someone would take it from him. Phil had seen that behavior before, but it had been in long-term PoWs who had survived food torture. Seeing the behavior in a child was mildly disturbing, even with the comfort that there was no reason to do that to a child.

"What are you doing here?" Phil asked, unintentionally aloud.

The boy looked up immediately. His green eyes widened like a deer in the headlights. Then he was scrabbling off the high chair with a dexterity belaying his apparent age. With near inhuman speed, the boy had his back to the far wall. He had his hands pressed against the wall behind him.

"Sorry, sir," the boy said, looking on the verge of panicking. He glanced once at the abandoned burger. "You can have it, sir."

"Are you sure?" Phil asked, making his way to the table. In addition to the half-eaten burger, there were thick fries that were perfectly golden. He plucked one from the container and made a show of eating it. It was still hot enough to burn his mouth, probably ordered using the no salt trick. "Mm. You sure that you don't want these? They're delicious."

"No, sir," the boy answered immediately. His voice sounded flat. His eyes shimmered with what might have actually been tears. "You can have them, sir."

"You should at least try them before making a decision," Phil argued. He pulled another fry out to wave it in the kid's direction. The boy looked tempted but stayed pressed against the wall. Phil gave the fry another wave. "Are you here with Stark? He doesn't seem the type to randomly pick up a kid. Are you waiting for CPS to pick you up?"

The boy looked frozen. He stared at Phil for a long moment. Then he was blinking rapidly as he stared at the ground instead. He shook his head, the inky curls tousling with the motion. He also seemed to be mouthing something to himself, but the angle made it impossible for Phil to read his lips. His hands clenched into fists in the loose fabric of his pants.

"Were you with Stark wherever he was being held?" If the boy had been with Stark, then the man's escape made a bit more sense. People tended to act atypically when children were involved. Even an egocentric playboy might be driven to withstand whatever torture if he thought he was protecting a child. That didn't explain why he had brought the child back with him, but then again, the boy had been here alone while Stark held a press conference to announce his return. "How did you escape?"

"What are you doing here?"

Phil turned to see a black man in the doorway. The man wore the dress blues of the US Air Force. Across his breast was an impressive array of ribbons for a lieutenant colonel. In his hands were a couple of bottles of tea. Phil idly noted that it was the same brand that May preferred if she was forced to get tea premade.

"Col. Rhodes?" Phil waited until the man gave him a single nod of acknowledgement. Phil gave him his blandest smile, only to receive a blank look in return. "I'm Agent Phil Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. I need to debrief you on your rescue of Mr. Stark and the boy."

"You can request my report through my superiors," Rhodes said coldly. His eyes flicked to the boy before settling back on Phil's face. "It still doesn't explain why you are here or why you are mauling a child's fries. Especially since _Dr._ Stark was fully debriefed before arriving back Stateside. You can request that report as well."

"I have seen both those reports, but we're a separate division with a more specific focus—"

"I bet you are," Rhodes interrupted. Phil barely managed to stop the frown from crossing his face at the rudeness. "Since your suit says you're Intelligence, I'm sure that you'll understand this: go through the proper channels to request a separate debrief like you were supposed to and _just this once_ , I'll pretend that I didn't catch you trying to steal food from a child."

"I wasn't—"

"You're holding his fry and he's across the room," Rhodes interrupted _again_. Phil couldn't stop the frown this time. Military officers were usually more polite than this, at least until they got high enough in the food chain that they only had to answer to generals and the President. "Take one look at the kid and tell me who they're gonna believe? More importantly, that's Tony Stark's ward and we're in a Stark Industry building. Do you really think that you aren't being recorded?"

"It's not admissible in court."

"It's security footage," Rhodes countered. He grinned, showing off way too many teeth to be anything except threatening. "I think you'll find that it's completely admissible. And since this will probably be your next defense, I don't care if he told you it was alright. You're an adult and he is a _child_ who is clearly afraid of _you_. Anything he said or indicated can be considered done under duress. Now this is your last warning before security is called: _get out_."

"Col. Rhodes, I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation."

"I don't think you understand the legal definition of _harassment_ , Agent Coulson."

"I'm not harassing anyone. I'm just doing my job."

"We both know that you aren't. Nowhere in your job description includes interrogating a child without their guardian present."

"That's a very strong accusation to make, Col. Rhodes."

"Yet accurate," Rhodes replied as he crossed his arms, "because it's exactly what you were doing when I walked in. You can claim that you have read the reports all you want, but your questions say differently."

"You were also informed that we would see about setting up an appointment for a later date, Mr. Coulson," Potts said as she strode into the room. Without breaking stride, she marched right up to Phil and placed her leather folder on the table next to the hamburger and fries. Then she grabbed his wrist and took the fry from him. "Thank you for your interest, but I feel that Mr. Stark does not have any appointments available for the foreseeable future. If your organization still wishes for information of Mr. Stark's escape, I politely suggest that you follow proper channels. As a matter of politeness, I am officially informing you that any mechanical designs used in the process are the propriety of Tony Stark and we _will_ persecute to the fullest extent any attempt to steal them."

"It's a matter of national security—"

"Which is why we are working closely with our official military liaisons," Potts interrupted. Phil gritted his teeth. He had not been interrupted this much in rapid succession since he had tried to argue with May's decision to retire from the field. "Now, I believe that Col. Rhodes has asked you to leave. The security guards outside the door will escort you off the premises. You are barred from all Stark Industries properties, including Mr. Stark's personal residency. Am I clear?"

"Miss Potts—"

" _Am I clear,_ Agent Coulson?"

"Crystal, Miss Potts," Phil said. Fury wasn't going to appreciate having to assign a different agent to the case. At least the presence of the boy meant that there may be a way of placing an agent in Stark's house when the man inevitably got bored of taking care of him and started looking for a nanny of some sort. It still stung a little to be summarily kicked out within the first half hour of the mission.

But If there was one that Phil Coulson knew it was when to beat a strategic retreat.

-= LP =-

James watched Coulson carefully as he left. He even ducked his head out to make certain that the agent was going to give the security guards any gruff. Only when the annoying little suit was completely out of sight did James turn towards Harry who was swaying slightly besides the far wall. The kid had wrapped his arms around his middle. James could see bright red lines where he had started scratching at the exposed skin below his sleeves.

"Aw, shit," James muttered rushing over to the table to drop the bottles of tea before continuing on to scoop Harry into his arms. He immediately sank to the ground, half expecting the kid to start trying to claw his face and screaming like Tony would have. It had been years since James had to execute the maneuver but it still came naturally to gather Harry's tiny wrists in one of his hands as he moved the kid into his lap. Harry laid limply against his chest, staring out into the room blindly.

 _No, blindly would have been better_.

James found himself watching flashing scenes, _hundreds of them_ , of the same three individuals. The angry horse-faced woman that James had seen back in Afghanistan was particularly vicious about things. A man who might generously be called a walrus was more violent, but the woman was outright cruel. The third individual was another boy, a copy of the man in miniature, and probably no more than a handful of months older than Harry. James watched as all of them, even the kid, mocked and berated the little boy and each cutting remark repeated the same phrase over and over again.

 _Freak_ , they called him when he struggled to understand things like expressions or their arbitrary rules that wouldn't have been excusable for prisoners on death row, let alone a child. _Freak_ , they called when he demonstrated how absolutely brilliant he was, possibly even smarter than Tony and definitely light-years beyond what that other boy was capable of. _Freak_ , they called him when they bothered to touch him skin to skin and got memories or his hair grew back overnight. He didn't understand that it wasn't really his name, so he ignored the teacher calling him _Harry_ instead and the other children snickered before repeating that word.

All of it broke James' heart as much as the feeling laced throughout the memories that this was all just another setup for the same situation or for another version of the cave, because the man who had taken him from those people had been nice at first, too. James closed his eyes and pressed his nose into Harry's hair to breathe in the scent of generic medical soap. He took a deep breath and started concentrating as hard as he could on the way his own mind went smooth and blank whenever he went into a battle.

It took a few moments but eventually, Harry started trembling in James' hold. His breath was shuddering with odd hitches in it. Immediately, James shifted him around so that Harry's ear was pressed against his chest and his free hand could comb through Harry's curls.

"Rhodey," Harry said, sounding close to tears. His fingers twitched weakly against James' ribbons and lapel. " _Rhodey._ "

"Yeah, little man, I've got you," James whispered, no less vehement for being soft. He added a slight rocking motion to the hold. "It's over now. You're safe. I've got you, and we'll get through the rest."

Feeling someone watching, James opened his eyes to see Tony crouched in front of them. His brown eyes looked as wet as James' felt. Trusting that Harry wasn't going to turn into a snarling cat, James released his wrists to beckon Tony closer. Without a care for the Tom Ford he was wearing, Tony instantly moved into the offered side-hold. James scratched at both their scalps, earning quiet hums of appreciation from both of his koala-cats.

 _Like father, like son_.

James wanted to sigh at how _not surprised_ he was.

-= LP =-  
 _To be continued in Part 05: Heights_  
-= LP =-


	5. Heights

**Author's Note(s):** So…um, y'all may have noticed that this isn't going to be the last chapter. That was not planned and just goes to show that no matter how confident I am that a fic is going to follow my plan, that I'm not entirely in control of things. This is also what I get for starting the posting of a story that is only three-fifths written. Good news is that next chapter is less heavy on the interpersonal plot and deals mostly with the remaining shifts on the _Iron Man_ events. Unfortunately, this means that the concluding chapter will have to wait to be written until after I finish my competition pieces for this round.

Also, it's come to my attention that my FFN readers may not be aware of certain things, since I've forgotten to put it in Author's Notes and my AO3 readers have the tags. Rhodey & Tony are not a romantic pairing; they are also not siblings or merely friends. They have a Queer Platonic Relationship (QPR), which, yeah, contains a lot of traits of a romantic ship and I am aware that this seems like a ship tease or deliberate avoidance of a male/male ship. I apologize if you feel that way, because that was not my intention. They've had the same kind of relationship throughout the series and have already dealt with some of the issues that come with having a QPR. Another thing that the FFN readers may be missing (and is actually discuss in one of the scenes this chapter) is that not only is Tony autistic, but so is Harry. At this point, both are undiagnosed, though Tony has people who recognized the traits and adapted to accommodate him. For the record, Howard Stark and Peggy Carter were/are not in that group, which is something that has its own set of issues (also seen a bit in this chapter). As a final note, FFN readers are advised that I am ignoring the Great Copyright Divide. This means that some things have been slid around slightly in an attempt to reconcile things a bit better.

 **Challenge/Competition Block** :  
 **Stacked with:** Not Commonwealth; Sky's the Limit; Terms of Service; By Any Other Name; Fem Power Challenge; Neurodivergent (Autism)  
 **Representation:** Tony Stark; Asexuality; Military Personnel/Heroes; Starks/Rhodes; Pepper Potts  
 **Bonus Challenge(s):** Endless Wonder; Fire & Fold; Misshaped Pods; Second Verse (Wabi Sabi); Second Verse (Middle Name); Second Verse (Tomorrow's Shade); Second Verse (Unwanted Advice); Second Verse (Nontraditional); Second Verse (Found Family); Second Verse (Zucchini Bread); Second Verse (Not a Lamp); Second Verse (Nightingale); Second Verse (Not Mozart)  
 **Word Count** : 4397

-= LP =-  
 **The Purpose of Aeries**  
 _Daedalus Bound_  
Part 05: Heights  
-= LP =-  
 _You were so solemn, so tiny but so ancient ...  
You didn't say too much  
But your smile taught me how to quiet down my mind_  
– Dessa, "Children's Work"  
-= LP =-

Tony leaned on the glass wall beside the door as he watched Harry exploring the lab. It was weird having someone else in what was undeniably _his space_. Pepper came in sometimes, usually to have him sign papers or to chase him out for boring things, and Rhodey hung out when he was on a longer leave than a few days. This didn't feel the same way. Pepper was always straight in and then back out; Rhodey was as much of a fixture as the leather sectional that Tony had shipped cross-country from his old brownstone in New York. Introducing Harry to the space was a bit like bringing one of his bots online for the first time, terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

Maybe a little more terrifying, because Harry was far more breakable than a bot and less clearly defined than a program that Tony had built.

It was the breakable aspect that had his heart jumping into his throat as Harry reached for Dummy's claw. Dummy was the oldest of Tony's bots, yeah, but he had never really gotten the idea of living things are _fragile_ , or rather, he understood too well, because it was Dummy who was the most protective and a large portion of the decision to lock most people out of Tony's lab spaces. It was Dummy who had always attacked Ty before Rhodey had summarily tossed the guy out on his ear.

It was Dummy who was running his claw through Harry's hair as the kid giggled silently.

Not to be outdone, U and Butterfingers were both nudging their way into reach to nudge and poke. As inevitable when his bots all got interested in the same things, one of them poked Harry's side hard enough that it made Harry visibly flinch away. Tony straightened to interfere when Dummy pushed Butterfingers away before curling around the tiny boy. Dummy used the slight hold to pull Harry away from the other two and closer to his own chassis. Tony froze as he watched Dummy snap his claw at his brothers and beep angrily.

Dummy had never been protective of a human other than Tony, not even Rhodey who was the bots' co-conspirator on so many things.

He had also not seen Harry smile like he was doing as his tiny fingers rubbed at the pressure sensor plate hidden behind Dummy's camera. That smile, even as small and almost hidden as it was, loosened the knot of worry Tony had been carrying behind the Arc Reactor he now had embedded in his chest. It loosened even further when Butterfingers hung his claw after Dummy's scolding, prompting an audible giggle from Harry. The sound made Harry flinch and shoot a terrified look at Tony.

"Don't let the pout fool you," Tony said, leaning back against the glass in an effort to show nonchalance. He pointed at Butterfingers. "Butterfingers is sorry _now_ , but he won't remember what he did wrong in five minutes. He'll get excited and do it all over again. It's why he breaks the most stuff."

Harry blinked at his direction, reminding Tony that he should probably see about getting him into an eye doctor of some sort. Tony's mind started making a list of everything that he should probably do, the edges starting to burn with the speed of the tangenting thoughts. He swallowed hard against the sudden craving for his normal method of drowning the burn. He wasn't Butterfingers; he remembered how Harry had flinched at Tony's craving so many months ago. Howard wouldn't have cared, therefore the way forward here was clear.

"You don't—" Harry said before abruptly stopping as his voice cracked. His mouth kept moving for a couple of seconds. His face got a frustrated expression as his eyes took on a slight shimmer. Tony immediately started across the space between them.

"Hey, no, we talked about this," Tony scolded lightly, dropping into a crouch before Harry. "I know it's frustrating, but trying to force out words when they don't want to come? Yeah, that's never going to help. In fact, it's the opposite of help, because it sort of compounds the problem which just multiples the problem that's making the words run away. Someone very wise and totally awesome—her name's Jenny and you'll love her, by the way. Probably more than—I had a point. It's somewhere in this. Uh, gimme a sec?"

Harry looked torn between crying and laughing. Tony took a gamble and reached out to rub his shoulders ( _too thin, too bony, so fragile, so breakable_ ) before taking a deep breath to continue. Hopefully, he wouldn't devolve into another tangent.

"She spent a lot of time telling me that it is not a flaw to have limits." Tony bopped Harry on the nose gently, making the boy go cross-eyed for a moment and flooding both of them with the sense memory of being tucked under a sheltering arm. "It's also not a failure to have reached them. So don't force them when they run away; they'll come back eventual. In the meantime, there's other ways to get a point across. I've learned a bunch of them over the years. I can teach you, easy peasy, lemon squeezy. And if none of them work for you? We can find them together, little bug."

"Together or not at all," Harry replied solemnly. Tony nodded, just as solemnly. Harry swallowed a couple of times. Then he reached out hesitantly to press his palm against Tony's cheek. A flash of pain and confused fear went through him as a screech about someone always destroying things made him want to cover his ears against the woman's voice. Harry yanked his hand back, to wring it with the other one in front of his chest. Dummy snapped his claw once at Tony over the boy's head. Harry's voice shook as he whispered his broken question. "Not Butterfingers?"

"Not any of them, Harry," Tony answered. His voice sounded choked and small ( _too small to fight back; too alone to expect help;_ _ **never again**_ ) but the words were still clear. He took another deep breath and this time his voice was stronger. "Not any of them, no matter what they do, and _not you either_."

"Lay a finger on my son in anger again," Harry echoed, "and none of your well-trained spies will be able to save you."

"Eym always did have the best ideas," Tony agreed. He shoved away the mushiness that threatened to overwhelm him, reaching out a hand for Harry to take. As Harry lightly laid his palm against Tony's own, Tony focused on the memories of Ana that always lifted his spirits the most, all with the same activity. "JARVIS? Drop my needle?"

The opening bars of Fleetwood Mac's _Rhiannon_ filled the workshop. Soon, all five of them were dancing with varying degrees of skill and enthusiasm. Butterfingers made it through two songs before knocking over a rolling cabinet full of wire spools.

Harry helped right alongside Tony to clean up the mess.

He was smiling the whole time.

-= LP =-

Pepper marched down the stairs to Tony's workshop like she was going to war. The sweet vindication of victory still pounded through her veins. It felt good to be carrying her news along with the various gifts she had in her arms. With all the outside threats subdued for the moment, it was time to take on the more internal demons. She wasn't afraid to admit that the gifts doubled as bribes.

Helpfully, JARVIS opened the door for her without making her punch in her code. The clicking of the lock releasing made the humans in the lab look up at her immediately. The identical expressions of _knowing_ they had been caught in the act would have been comical if Harry hadn't immediately grabbed a fist of Tony's shirt. His knuckles were white with tension as he watched her through his lashes just like he had every other time she had entered the lab while he was awake.

"That looks a lot like a weapon, Tony," Pepper said as neutrally as possible as she carefully shifted her load to one arm to drop off the top box and the cup of coffee on the work table nearest the door. Tony whined at the deliberate show of petulance. _Good, maybe next time he'd think about having her perform icky medical tasks unexpectedly._ He'd have to untangle himself from whatever experiment he had wrapped around his arm, but she knew that he would for coffee and that would be the perfect opportunity to convince him to eat some of the two pizzas she was now carrying towards the seating arrangement.

Judging by Tony's sigh, he saw her manipulation and was either ignoring the potential workaround or understood that she was willing to counter any attempt to order Harry to fetch the mug. It would set back her plans, true, because she would be using the fact that he was already frightened of her to do it, but she would. She kept her back to the pair as she arranged the pizza boxes so that both were accessible, one with its opening pointed towards the spot she had determined was Harry's favorite. Then she was left holding just the stuffy she had carefully chosen as she listened to the sound of Tony releasing whatever contraption he had been working on when she arrived and squishing the urge to regress back to chewing on her thumbnail to quell the nervousness she felt.

She had just taken on an entire board of sexist assholes and _won_.

She could convince one frightened little boy that he didn't actually need to fear her.

She refused to reflect on why that seemed important for more than Harry's wellbeing.

"Okay, so you literally _never_ bring me coffee," Tony said, interrupting her silent scheduling of a mental breakdown for six weeks from Thursday. "I think it was in your contract, actually. You also hate everything about food in the 'shop." Tony gasped dramatically as he came around to plop on the couch, somehow managing to not spill his coffee in the process. "Are you replacing me with a younger version? Pepper, darling, light of my dashboard, cheese of my fondue, _say it's not so_!"

"Well, Harry is prettier than you," Pepper quipped with a flash of a toothy smile. Turning slightly to look fully at the boy who had been slinking closer to his spot, she fidgeted a little with one of the rabbit's extra long ears. "That pizza is for you, Harry. I didn't know what you liked, so I just got my favorite. If you don't like anything on it, don't worry about picking it off. No one will be mad."

"It's okay, ma'am," Harry replied. He looked torn between running away and snatching the pizza first. "I don't—I'm fine. It's your favorite. You can have it. I don't mind."

"That was as believable as Tony pretending to know nothing about art," Pepper said flatly. Tony made a noise of protest but when her eyes cut over to him, he focused intently on the dark contents of his mug. Satisfied, she refused on the boy frozen beside the far arm of the couch. "If you don't want pizza, we can order something else. You will still get a portion that is _just yours_.

"Let me make my stance on this matter perfectly clear: food will not be given and then taken away here. Barring allergies and similar medical reasoning, food will not be restricted here. You will not be punished for not liking something offered you; if you don't like something, you are expected to speak up so that we can get you something else. JARVIS keeps the kitchen fully stocked. You are welcomed to any of the contents at any time. If you feel the need to do so, you may keep food stashed about, but only nonperishables in sealed containers. I understand that these things will be difficult to remember because everything you have experienced previously has taught you otherwise. I know that it will take time for these things to sink in for the same reason. We'll take it take it a day at a time and handle issues as they come up. Have I made my expectations clear?"

Harry was staring at her fully now. His eyes were wide and filled with gratitude. His fingers were tangled in the hem of the tee shirt he was wearing (over a long-sleeved shirt, just like what Tony was wearing, which was cuter than it had any right to be). He swallowed a few times before glancing fugitively at Tony who had his eyes tightly closed as he squeezed his cup just as hard. The carefully blanked expression was very close to the one Tony used when he performed hostile takeovers for slights against her. Suddenly, Pepper agreed entirely with JARVIS' decision to not reveal the names and current location of Harry's previous guardians. To regain Harry's attention, she agilely stepped forward enough to drop the stuffy onto the cushion next to Harry's spot and immediately returned to her previous place the other side of Tony.

"That's also for you. I know that JARVIS has gotten you stuff upstairs, but I noticed that there was a lack of toys. I just thought that you might want something to sleep with." Harry hesitated to move closer to the stuffed rabbit even as his fingers twitched on his shirt like he was tempted. Her heart lurched to see him so reticent when any other child would have pounced. "Same rules apply, Harry. If you don't like it, we can get you something else. No one will be mad."

"I don't know what you want," Harry said, as he wrapped his arms around himself. He had refocused on her, but his expression was so lost and broken that she moved to hug him without thinking. Just as quickly, his arms were crossed in front of his face. Somehow, he must have also managed to find a shadow, because the light around him seemed dimmer. "Sorry! Sorry! I'm _sorry_. Don't— _please_."

Pepper paused a beat before closing the remaining distance to pull him into her arms. She could hear Tony arguing with Dummy behind her, but all her focus was on Harry. It was awkward with the way Harry had his arms, but she pulled him into her lap, trying her best to mimic the way Rhodey had held him. Rhodey had made dealing with uncooperative limbs look easy. God, was Harry made entirely of knees and elbows? It didn't help that Harry was stiffer than the scotch Tony preferred on the days he hates himself the most (not that he'd admit that was what he was feeling, which was far more frustrating than it should be).

Then he _wasn't_ stiff anymore because he was clinging to her, his hands clenching at the fabric of her dress. His face was pressed against her shoulder. Judging by the moisture gathering on her skin, she concluded his shaking must be from crying. Suddenly, she could remember how her grandmother used to hold her when she was little and crying this hard. The awkwardness melted away as she closed her eyes and copied her Nana. It might not have been perfect, but it was more natural than trying to copy Rhodey. She kissed Harry's temple before whispering the same comfort her Nana had given her after Pepper had gone to live with her after her mother died.

"Rain's always going to fall, baby," she said, "but afterwards, there's always rainbows." Carefully, she pulled back enough that she could see his face. Wiping away his tears like her Nana had always done hers, she continued. "I don't want this in _payment_ —" Her lip twitched into a flicker of a sneer at the thought of a child paying for basic necessities before she could stop it. She smoothed out her expression quickly. "—but I do want you to do something for me, Harry. I want you to look for the rainbows. You don't have to find them every single time or right away. I just want you to look. Can you do that?"

"Yes, ma'am," Harry replied. Pepper's heart twisted at the honorific, hurt and jealous that Harry didn't feel the need to use one with Rhodey or Tony but unwilling to voice the feeling when she knew it would pass. Harry just wasn't as comfortable with her as he was with the guys. There was no problem with that. Then Harry reached up and pressed her hand more fully against his cheek. His green eyes, still shiny from crying, met hers and she was reminded even more of how her Nana sometimes would look before dispensing advice that was always perfect but didn't always make sense at the time. "She wants you to look for 'em, too. You haven't bothered for so long that ya got the notion you're all alone. That ain't right, may-blossom, and you know it."

"Yeah," Pepper agreed, struggling not to cry because those words sound so much like something her Nana would have. She pulled away farther to give herself space to compose herself. Helpfully, Harry gave her space as well, finally scooping up the stuffed bunny from the couch. He made a noise of surprise; a curl of satisfaction went through her, just as good as triumphing against corporate jerkwads. It only grew when Harry started rubbing his face with one of the ears. She absolutely could have cheered when the tiny boy started swaying slightly as he started making a low humming sound.

"I don't understand," Tony whispered from right behind her. "Why is he doing that? He didn't do that with anything else?"

"I'm not entirely certain," Pepper admitted. "I saw—well, I saw how much he liked being touched and how having a person near him made him twitchy. I was doing some research, in between dealing with the board's attempts at mutiny, and monitoring everything ordered for Harry—by the way, I had JARVIS cancel all twenty-four orders for playground equipment. That's excessive and will only overwhelm Harry while he's still adjusting to being here. You can pick _one_ for Christmas. The two months should give him the time he needs, and you can hire a proper landscaper to pick a safe spot on this cliff of doom you live on."

"I like the landscaper idea, but why are you monitoring my purchases?"

"JARVIS and I have a deal about any substantial transfer of resources and personnel. He was distressed about you sending MIT twenty thousand dollars' worth of tofu. I admittedly I was concerned as well, but Rhodey believed it to be an excellent gift for the new president, something about it being a long story. Anyway, now JARVIS sends me anything he believes you aren't being practical about and I handle them."

"That was five years ago—you've been doing this on top of all the other stuff?"

"It helps JARVIS relax," she answered evenly. "Since he admits to analyzing science fiction for where the AI or robots went wrong, I think it's in everyone's best interests to keep his stress levels down."

"Fair enough," Tony agreed. "So research?"

"Yes, I was doing research," Pepper continued, "and I came across mentions various sensory therapies and a weighted stuffed toy was one. JARVIS mentioned the lack of toys—"

"I really should do something about that."

"—and I just thought that he might like it," she finished, ignoring his interruption. Her eyes were still watching Harry getting lost in his new toy. "Tony, I don't want to dictate how you care for Harry, but I really think he needs to be assessed for possible psychological disorders. He obviously was abused before ending up _with terrorists_ , which is nowhere that anyone should be let alone a child. That's traumatic enough, but there's also something else going on and _knowing_ what will help make this transition easier for all of us."

"He's fine, Pep," Tony snapped. "There's nothing wrong with Harry. _He's not broken_."

She twisted around, prepared to meet Tony's anger with her own. Tony didn't look angry, however. He looked, well, he looked a lot like Harry before his confession. He looked confused and desperate and so scared. The only time she had seen that look on him was when he had seen that the CEO of Wizard had announced creating an AI as home assistant similar to JARVIS, only she was going to mass-market it. He had been worried the AI not being taken care of or potentially leading to an investigation into other known AIs. Tony was always the epitome of nonchalance and flippancy until someone he loved was threatened. But all she had done was suggest Harry see a psychologist—why would that be threatening?

"Oh, god," she said as the realization hit her. It had never occurred to her that lack of its mention in his files might have been deliberate ignorance. When Rhodey had warned against talking to Tony about her suspicions about him, she had thought it was just hubris or something similar. Rhodey's sister was one of the leading names in psychology and therapy. It had never occurred to her that Tony would be afraid of them, especially since he clearly adored everything about Jenny Rhodes. "No, Tony, I'm not saying that he is broken or even that something is necessarily _wrong_. I'm saying that under all the horrible things he's gone through, there's something else that needs to be addressed. Knowing what it is will help us find ways to help him. As you like to say, it's variables and we need them to make this work."

She moved so that her back was against the couch before beckoning Tony closer. Tony sat down next to her, putting his own back towards the couch. Shockingly, Harry wiggled into the space between them, though he was leaning more against Tony's side than hers. He was still curled around the rabbit. One of the ears had been wrapped several times around his left wrist. She ducked down quickly to press a kiss against his temple before remembering that they had pizzas which were getting cold.

"We can talk about this later," Pepper said, turning Harry's box towards them. "I had this idea that we would just eat out of the boxes."

The smell of cooked vegetables grew stronger when she flipped open the lid for Harry to examine the contents. Harry looked at her, trying to find something on her face. Then his right hand darted forward to snag a single slice. Despite the speed of the move, none of the toppings spilled. Furtively, he began to eat it in quick little bites that didn't need much chewing. Satisfied that he was eating, she reached for the box she had gotten for her and Tony to share.

"So, I was under the impression that you weren't going to make any more weapons," Pepper said before taking a bite of her own slice of veggie pizza. As predictable, Tony began to explain the _flight stabilizer_ that they had been working on and how _perfectly harmless_ it was. Knowing how many times Tony had said about experiments that resulted in the workshop needing to be repaired, she was tempted to chide him about working on it with Harry right next to him. But Harry had started interrupting Tony's explanation with corrections that might as well have been in Latin for how scientific they were and Tony was arguing, as he would have with anyone else, except for the lack of attitude that the person correcting his science was an idiot.

She eventually stopped contributing. Neither of them seemed to notice, busy as they were arguing in technobabble, but she managed to get them to eat most of the pizzas and to switch to the water that Dummy had produced from the workshop's minifridge. Her mission successful, Pepper leaned her head back against the couch cushions and closed her eyes.

Everything wasn't perfect, but it was close enough to count.

-= LP =-

Tony reveled in the sensation of flying, in the freedom that the act still inspired in him. He was only paying half attention to the numbers JARVIS was providing. He was already planning improvements for when he built Harry one. Maybe he should put that off a few years? Harry was still small; he might not have the body strength yet to handle a suit. Even Tony who was used to manhandling large pieces of metal and wily bots was having difficulties with some of the maneuvering necessary to control the suit.

He still had a feeling that the kid would be a natural.

"Is Harry still asleep, J?"

"Yes, Sir, and the trend of the last few days seems to be holding. No sign of nightmares or premature waking." JARVIS made one of his noises for irritation. "I do believe that you should consider returning sooner rather than later just in case. Three days of solid sleep are not indicative of a cure. The boy will be very distressed if he were to wake and you were not in the mansion."

"Rhodey's upstairs. He likes Rhodey. If he wakes up, you can direct Harry to him until I'm back."

"He has shown a marked preference for you over all others, Sir. Moreover, I must express concern at your current level of risk. The custody paperwork is not completely finalized. Should something happen to you, there is an unacceptable likelihood of undesirable parties gaining physical custody of Harry given that Col. Rhodes would need to be on hand as soon as possible to authorize medical procedures. I urge you to return to analyze the collected data."

"Just one last trick, J, something really impressive to bring home for the Har-bear." Tony grinned, knowing just the thing. "What's the record for the SR-71?"

"Sir, might I remind you of the fate of Icarus?"

"It's night, baby boy, and the suit's not made of wax."

"If you say so, Sir," JARVIS stated, though he clearly still disagreed. He flashed the requested information into the HUD display as Tony began his ascent.

He was Tony Stark.

 _Watch him soar._

-= LP =-  
 _To be concluded in Part 06: Waves_  
-= LP =-


	6. Feathers

**Warnings:** This particular chapter has a lot of potentially triggering material, including toxic thought patterns, trauma responses, and a very brief urge for an alcoholism relapse.

 **Author's Notes:** So, yeah, um, it's been a while, hasn't it? Good news is that after this chapter, there's only two major events to be covered by this fic, which come hell or high water, I'm gonna try to cover in just one chapter. To forestall anyone getting their hopes up: _Iron Man_ 's timeline does not include any dates in December, so Roberta will not be appearing in this particular story. Also to forestall commentary: internal ableism is a thing, and yes, even adults can still exhibit toxic mindsets learned in their childhood.

 **Challenge/Competition Block:** **  
Stacked with:** NCP; SoC; PP; LL; NC; StL; ToS; BAON; FPC; SHoE; Ethnic & Present (n/a); Neurodivergent (Y); Fear Inside (N); Short Journey (Y); The Real MC (Y); Not Easy (Y); Quiet Time (Y); TIny Terror (Y); Fire Time (Y); Laws (N); MoD Harry Potter (N); Differently (Y); Truth (Y); Trope It Up B (N) **  
Representations:** Neurodivergent; Lingering Effects of Abuse; Mutations & CIs; Learning like it or not; Tony Stark; Asexuality/QPR; Military Service/Superheroes; Defense Squad; Jenny Rhodes **  
Bonus Challenges:** Most Human Bean; Second Verse (Not a Lamp; Ladylike - Relentless; Clio's Conclusion; Nontraditional; Found Family; Wabi Sabi; Middle Name; Nightingale; Tomorrow's Shade; Unwanted Advice; Unicorn; Zucchini Bread; Endless Wonder; Misshapen Pods; Mermaid; Casper's House; Call Me Dantes; Machismo - Emotional; Lovely Coconuts; Under the Bridge); Demo (Where Angels Fear)  
 **Secondary Bonus Challenges:** SHoE (Onus) **  
Word Count:** 4222

-= LP =-  
 **The Purpose of Aeries**  
 _Daedalus Bound_  
Part 06: Feathers  
-= LP =-  
 _Don't believe everything that you hear  
Let it go through your left and right ear  
Don't just march to the beat of that drum  
Don't be one of them people just twiddlin' them thumbs  
_ – Sabrina Carpenter, "Thumbs"  
-= LP =-

Tony paced after Harry had finally gone back to sleep. He had fucked up leaving when the kid had been asleep. It might not have been so bad if Tony hadn't returned by falling through the ceiling of the garage instead of walking through the door. Tony had enough of a handle on how Harry's memory-thing worked that he could have hidden the icing problem by the time the kid had woken up in the morning. Instead, the fall with its desperate edge had still been on top of his mind when Harry had touched him to help the robotic arms remove the armor.

To say that Harry had been terrified would have been hilariously understated. Yet it wasn't the fear that had convinced Tony just how badly he had messed up. It was how Harry had reacted. Tony had gotten used to the way that Harry would willingly lean into him whenever they were close, despite how it had been less than two weeks since their first embrace in the cave. Harry had also started to settle into something resembling _kidlike_ instead of the shadow creature that had haunted the cave.

All of that progress had disappeared the moment Harry saw just how close Tony had been to dying.

Of course, Harry would understand what that meant. The kid was scary smart, more than capable of keeping up with Tony, which very few people had ever been able to do. Seeing the little guy go so quiet and _blank_ had still surprised Tony. It wasn't natural; it couldn't be. Tony doubted that many people would see the difference in Harry's usual indifference and deference to adults and the robotic way that Harry had started acting. That wasn't the point. It wasn't what had Tony pacing the edges of the workshop and mentally flaying himself.

After perfunctorily helping Tony escape the armor and then tidying it away, Harry had started clearing away the rubble from the ceiling with the same empty efficiency. Tony had tried to get his attention, but he might have been on the other side of the world for all the good it did. Even the bots and JARVIS couldn't get the kid to respond. In the end, he had settled on helping Harry and the bots clean up the mess. Dummy had a few scolding complaints about Tony reaching out whenever Harry would stumble or sway, exhausted despite his obvious determination to finish his self-assigned task, but as the night turned to early morning, those complaints changed into chirps of concern.

Once the task had been completed, Harry had retreated to the closet built into the oddly-shaped space between the stairs and the elevator. Tony had followed, curious and worried, because as far as he knew, that closet only held the bots' charge ports. Apparently, some time in the last couple weeks, Harry had built himself a kind of nest between Dummy's port and the far wall. Tony didn't recognize many of the blankets he had chosen—though he did think that he had spotted the cashmere shawl Pepper had mentioned as missing when she had called earlier. Harry had immediately curled into a ball. Dummy pushed forward to drag said shawl over his tiny form. At a loss of what to do, Tony had fetched the stuffed rabbit that Pepper had gotten Harry and tucked it carefully into the nest as well, hoping that its presence would still work despite whatever was going on.

Then he had retreated to his pacing and cursing himself for creating the situation in the first place. JARVIS had tried to warn him. He should have listened. Why didn't he listen? What if Harry stayed in that fugue state for the rest of his life? What if Tony had been the thing which finally succeeded in destroying the boy? Harry had survived his previous guardians and the Ten Rings, but less than two weeks in Tony's care, and already it was apparent just how unfit a person he was to be any kind of parental figure.

"Sir, you have an incoming call from—"

"No!" Tony shouted before wincing at the volume. "JARVIS, hold all calls—"

"Connecting now," JARVIS interrupted. Tony spun to look at his nearest input device, not bothering to hide the betrayal he was feeling. Then guilt filled his gut. JARVIS was already acting just as protective of Harry as the bots were. Of course, JARVIS would feel the need to get some kind of revenge against Tony who broke—

"Tony?"

"Jen-blossom?"

"Who else would be able to answer the phone at the office?" She sounded genuinely confused. "You know how picky IRIS is about connecting calls. She's like the incarnation of every bit of your paranoia about security. Speaking of your children, Jamie mentioned that there's a new one. What's this one's name?"

For a moment, Tony couldn't answer. It was clear to him that she was expecting to hear about a new bot or program. After all, who would trust him with a real kid? Tony was a disaster with adult humans. Children were far more vulnerable. What had he been thinking, trying to keep Harry here? Maybe if he had found a better family, Harry wouldn't have—

"I broke him," Tony confessed. His breath hitched and the weakness in his knees had him sinking onto the couch. "After all that happened, I should have known better. J tried to warn me but I didn't listen and now he's broken and _it's my fault_ and I don't know how to fix him because people are squishy and they don't make sense. Why did I think that he would be safe here? What do I know about kids? Tesla's taser, I'm an idiot, thinking that just doing the opposite of whatever Howard would do and trying to copy Jarvis would be enough. And now he's _broken_!"

"Who's broken, Tony?"

"Harry! I broke him!"

"How did you break Harry?"

Like a damn bursting, Tony began to just talk. Because it was Jenny and he was in the lab, he didn't even try to talk in circles or code. She was the only human who was better than Rhodey at understanding what he was saying when he was going on like this. She always had been, even beyond the weird way that all the Rhodeses seem to just _know_ things about him. There was a reason that Jenny had come to be considered the best therapist in the country, in her specialty. So Tony told her the whole story, about everything he suspect about Harry's guardians before the Ten Rings and the way Yinsen hadn't seemed patient with the boy's quirks, about Harry's abilities down to the smooth way he could handle tech and how protective both JARVIS and Dummy were of him, about Harry's hesitancy when offered anything and Pepper's cool reasoning about how it all probably fit together.

Then he got to the part about returning from his first flight and the way Harry had reacted to seeing how close Tony had come to crashing because of the icing problem. He described how quiet and unresponsive Harry had been as he worked. His voice broke as he described the nest and how determined Dummy had looked hovering over it like a silent watchdog.

"I _broke him_ ," Tony choked out. At some point during the tale, he had folded himself into the corner of the couch and wrapped his arms around his bent legs. "I thought I could do a better job than Howard but I was _wrong_. I tried to do the right thing, but I fucked up because that's what I do, what I _always do_."

There was a beat of silence after he stopped talking. Then Jenny spoke in an even tone that gave away nothing about how she felt about the information he had just dumped on her.

"What are you?"

"I'm a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist," Tony answered without really thinking about it. Answering that question was an old ritual. Ana had started it and then Jenny had stumbled upon it years later. Jenny had made him add words to the list over the years. The recitation rolled off Tony's tongue with an ease that soothed a lot of the angst roiling in his chest.

"Damn straight, little bird," Jenny returned. A bit of her Philadelphia accent leaked into her words, despite how many years it had been since she had lived in the City of Brotherly Love. "And not to put too fine a point on this, but Schimdt himself would be a better parent than Howard. You're light-years beyond that, as proven by the six children you've already got. You've been through situations that have broken people trained to handle them—both you and Harry have, it sounds like—and yet you survived and doing your best to adjust. There's gonna be hiccups and you've hit one. That's all."

"But I _broke_ —"

" _Anthony Elizabeth Jarvis-Rhodes_ ," she interrupted sharply enough that Tony's teeth clicked together, barely missing the tip of his tongue. He pressed his face to his knees, shamefully retreating into behaviors that he knew he should have outgrown a long time ago. Thank Turing that this wasn't a video chat. "You didn't break anyone, and I will not stand for you repeating that you did like a mantra. I understand that witnessing Harry like that was both frightening and unnerving, but I promise you that not only is it normal, it is actually a good thing."

"Turning into a zombie is good _how_?"

"Do you remember Harry ever having that reaction to anything before?"

"A few times? I think?" Tony didn't even know if those few random moments even counted. Harry had always shaken himself out of the zombie mode almost as quickly as he had fallen into it, and then he had retreated to one of his hiding places for the next few hours. Tony swallowed around the bile in his throat even as he thought about how often he had done similar to deal with Howard or the bullies at the boarding school he attended before MIT. Even at MIT, it was often better to (if he could) hold out long enough to get back to his apartment or to Rhodey's dorm room, where he would be safe from anyone who might use the slower reaction time to get the upper hand. Of course, that had always made things worse, but there wasn't anything that could have been done about that. "He was always so quiet."

"Like you get when you're stressed," Jenny said, with confidence. It wasn't a question, but Tony answered anyway.

"Well, yeah, but Harry's like me. Stress makes his voice run away, too."

"Tony," she said with a sigh. Worried that she might finally be getting to the lecture, Tony rushed to continue his explanation.

"Don't worry. I've told him exactly what you've always said—that it's okay and not to push it—and we're working on ASL. Harry's picking it up really quickly. He's really smart, Jen, completely capable of keeping up with me, even if he has some strange gaps in his knowledge that I haven't figured out yet. I would probably be able to understand better if JARVIS would give me access to his records, but someone is insisting on keeping secrets."

"I currently feel that it is in the best interest of all parties that I handle all necessary details, Sir," JARVIS stated, making his voice pattern sound flat and robotic. It was his way of showing anger which didn't help Tony's own desire for vengeance any, especially when JARVIS had admitted to both changing Harry's surname of record and actively withholding other biometric data. Not even Rhodey could convince him to release the information that would have allowed them to track down Harry's previous guardians. "There are enough things at present requiring your attention."

"Tony, what do you think it possibly means that Harry is like you?"

"That he's a genius?"

Tony didn't like the uncertainty in his tone. Jenny seemed to be hinting at something, but she was doing that leading questions thing instead of telling him outright. It was annoying enough at the best of times, but with his head still running full tilt from his worry over Harry, it was downright _evil_. He should have known better than to ever doubt Rhodey's wisdom about the nature of sisters.

"Quite possibly," Jenny agreed. "Variations in intelligence do tend to run concurrent with other neurodivergencies. Think over the other things that you have in common, little bird."

"There's nothing wrong with Harry," Tony said, speaking out of the panic that was clawing at his gut again. Pepper had mentioned something like this, but she had dropped it. Tony knew that Jenny wouldn't, not just because he was uncomfortable. She didn't back off on the stupid limits thing and she was even less likely to back off when a kid was involved.

" _Tony_ ," she said firmly, cutting through the rising panic and dread in his gut. He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. His mouth tasted sour and stale, so he worked his mouth a bit before swallowing. "Better, little bird?"

"I'm fine," he answered automatically. Jenny made a noise that could only be taken as doubtful. "Really, Jen-blossom. You know me. Just being dramatic." This time the sound was undeniably a sigh. Tony drew up a mask of indignation at her doubt. "I'm fucking awesome and you know it. But don't think I'm going to let you distract me with your sisterly evilness! You called for my expertise in something. Lay it on me. How can I, genius extraordinaire, help you?"

"You called me, Tony," she said, "or at least IRIS said that you did."

"J?" Tony looked at one of JARVIS' input ports. The indicator light blinked innocently a few times before returning to a steady light. He wasn't fooled.

"You appeared overly distressed. After consulting an expert, we agreed that Dr. Rhodes would provide the most efficient way of rectifying that." There was a beat of hesitation. "Our next course of action was to contact Lt. Rhodes despite indications of issues at Edwards requiring his personal oversight."

"This is what you get for having smart offspring, Tony," Jenny said before Tony could even process what JARVIS had implied. "They start conspiring. I'm not even surprised that IRIS would be involved—and she would have to be for you to call at exactly the beginning of the break I had between appointments. Now, I'm going to let you get away with the deflection, little bird, but you should be aware that I will not be as nice when I see you at Christmas."

"Christmas? But—"

"Whatever you're about to use as an excuse," Jenny interrupted, "you can save for someone who might let you get away with it. Mama's been making the plans since Jamie let her know he had found you. She wants to meet her newest grandson. If you want to deny her that, you get to be the one to tell her."

"You're _evil_ ," Tony accused without much heat. There really wasn't any arguing with Mama. On the other hand, it seemed unlikely that he was going to be able to travel anywhere with Harry. "How is this gonna work? Because Pep's not mentioned an extended stay anywhere and neither has JARVIS."

"Mrs. Rhodes should be arriving the evening of the eleventh, Sir," JARVIS replied instead of Jenny. "She expressed a wish to be present during the dates of Chanukah on the chance that you wished to celebrate it this year. Drs. Rhodes and Casey should be arriving on the twenty-third, if they are not delayed with Dr. Casey's family event. Mr. Rhodes has declined his invitation as usual but offers his gratitude for apparently winning him a bet by surviving."

JARVIS sounded disapproving of Joey's flippancy, but it made Tony feel uncomfortably warm to think that the youngest Rhodes son was actually happy that he hadn't died. It was even better to realize that Joey had apparently betted in favor of him surviving, regardless of the reason.

" _Brothers_ ," Jenny complained. "Okay, little bird, I need let you go now, but remember to take care of yourself. I'll send along some titles I think will assist you in things." He heard her take a deep breath. "And it's good to have you back, you know. We all missed you."

"Ugh, _feelings_ ," Tony whined. "Can we just _not_?"

"Yeah, whatever you want, little bird. Remember to call if you need anything. JARVIS, don't let him forget to eat."

"Of course, Dr. Rhodes, I will endeavor to keep both of them on a regular eating schedule, especially young Harry."

Tony waited until after Jenny had hung up to unfold from his corner of the couch. He didn't go far, just to the middle that he normally took. The adjacent portion that Harry normally slept on drew his attention with its emptiness. Maybe it was time to start sleeping in the actual bedrooms upstairs. Maybe if he had a space that was just _his_ , Harry would feel more comfortable, instead of hiding—so much more than just the nest of stolen items but also _himself_ —from Tony?

'… _not only is it normal, it is actually a good thing.'_

Jenny hadn't explained, not really, but that didn't really matter as Tony's mind started spinning the variables. Harry hadn't immediately retreated, hadn't tried to fight off the effect long enough to get to somewhere he felt was safer. He hadn't fallen into the cycle of apologies and promises that he would have right after they had arrived in Malibu. He also hadn't repeated anyone's words as a means of forcing himself to keep responding. Harry had— _oh_ , he had felt safe enough to just…to just let go. He had trusted that Tony wouldn't hurt him or let him be hurt. Tony swallowed around the lump in his throat.

Jenny was right: Harry turning into a zombie was a good thing.

That just left…

"Hey, J? You said that there were issues at Edwards? What issues?"

"An ongoing hostile incursion has been elevated in threat level due to the detection of potential Stark military tech in the hands of the terrorist force occupying the town. To complicate matters further, it appears that news media also has this information."

"Who has my stuff now?" Tony rushed on before JARVIS could respond. "You said that the news has released the information. Bring up the feed for me, baby boy?"

Immediately, the news began to play on the television. The reporter was on location. Behind her was the scruffy landscape that had been forever etched into Tony's memory. It was hard for it not to be when he had spent two days walking through it carrying Harry and essentially seeing multiple times at once. Tony never thought there could have been a worse thing for a genius than speed, but the sheer multitude that Harry had to handle because of his mutation boggled him if he stopped to think about it too long.

Then he saw the people behind the reporter. Refugees fleeing the terrorists, according to what she was saying, but Tony didn't need her report to know where they had been before they had fled. Harry had etched their faces into Tony's memory, too. They had come originally from Yinsen, and despite how neither of them had talked about him since their rescue, Tony knew both of them missed the man, possible plant or not. And there on the screen were his neighbors and friends, the tattered remains of Gulmira as it was conquered by men who had bought weapons Tony had made but never sold to them.

The rage was incandescent as it washed over Tony and cleansed away the sting of betrayed trust.

The Ten Rings had done this, and Obie had facilitated it.

Tony would give anything to make them both pay, to stop his work from being used for this legacy.

Suddenly Tony understood why Harry kept testing the concussive force levels on the repulsors. Harry always tried to anticipate what those around him would want. Tony had seen him do it with Yinsen and Raza both in that cave. He had certainly done so with Tony's work. The kid even did it with Rhodey and Pepper. Tony was certain that if Happy had been willing to spend any amount of time in the workshop, Harry would have started doing it with him, too.

Harry had known this was happening.

He had known how Tony would have wanted to respond.

With all the madness of Tesla, if it had just been himself to consider, he wouldn't have hesitated. Yinsen was as close as an asshole like him ever got to an Erskine, because people like Tony, with his laundry list of character defects, was never going to be good enough to be a hero. Jarvis and Rhodey would probably have had strong words to say about that, but Tony was a realist as much as a futurist. Drunken playboys with inherently broken parts didn't get miracle serums that made them perfect or gave them jolly green giant alter egos.

They got a suit of armor built in a cave out of the scraps of their mistakes.

Dying for vengeance wouldn't have been the worst way to go out.

But it wasn't just him to consider anymore, and judging by the way Harry had reacted to first the wall plant during flight testing and then the icing problem, going into a situation where he would be shot at was likely out of the question. He leaned back on the couch, scrubbing a hand over his face in aggravation. How the hell was he going to clean up this mess if he couldn't do it himself?

He wanted a drink, something strong and peaty and burning like the anger he wanted to unleash on his former captors.

He wanted to go hide in Rhodey's bed, wrapped up in the worn patchwork quilt that was certain to smell exactly like the airman, since he would have been sleeping in it just a few hours before.

What he did instead was go to the mini bar and pull out the pale wooden box he kept there. With all due reverence, Tony set it aside before pulling out the open-flame burner he also kept there. He pulled out a bottle of water (from a spring near the Welsh border, the closest Tony could manage to the right county), a sealed container of sugar cubes, and a bag of whole coffee beans. A custom made grinder followed, a break from the tradition he would be following but only as a improvement without sacrificing the ritual.

Set up, he visited the lab's sink to scrub the dust and grease from his hands and forearms, drying fully before returning. Only then did he lift the lid on the box, revealing one of the few relics that he had managed to preserve of the man who was his father in every way that truly counted. The complete set of everything necessary to make traditional Turkish coffee had been old when Jarvis had left it to Tony, coming from further back in Jarvis' family. Every piece was beautiful, from the orange-red and gold cup with matching saucer to the untarnished cezve with its handle of the same pale wood as the box. Jarvis had treasured the heirloom in a way that he did no other possession beside his wedding band.

Irony was that Jarvis hated coffee as much as Eym had loved the beverage. Most of Tony's memories of Jarvis making coffee using this method involved Eym in some way. After her death, it became a thing they did as a memorial or when Jarvis was trying to be comforting.

The last time they had shared cups of Turkish coffee had been just before Jarvis had broken the news that the dialysis was losing its effectiveness. Tony had retreated, probably very similarly to how Harry had earlier, and when he had come out of it, he had been back at MIT with Rhodey and a newly integrated CI. Of all his children, only Dummy had shown any interest in creating beverages. How much of that was the lingering effect of Jarvis' legacy?

Tony let the complexities of preparing coffee this way settle him. There was no singing this drink into existence. Balancing the frothing with cooling required too much focus, even for his mind. Yet he still faintly heard the lyrics of _Iron Man_ nearby. JARVIS was probably reading Tony's mood, like the clever boy he was.

What was Turkish coffee without Eym in some way, after all?

Task completed, Tony turned back towards the couch, feeling like he would be able to think of some plan once he had finished his cup. Harry was now standing behind the couch, his wide eyes locked on the television. As if sensing Tony's attention, the boy turned that gaze towards him, meeting Tony's full-on rather than using one of the tricks Tony had been teaching him for faking it. The shimmer across the green made Tony's heart clench.

"Can't we help?"

Tony could no more deny Harry than he could have left him in that cave.

-= LP =-  
To be continued  
-= LP =-


	7. Waves

**Content Warning:** There's a brief exchange between Rhodey & Harry where Harry is begging Rhodey to kill him instead of Tony (because Harry took him literally). Rhodey is properly freaked out by that. There's also a character death in this chapter. Tony is _not_ properly freaked out about that, because he's Tony and a bit of an idiot when it comes to the people he loves.

 **Author's Notes:** It's a very merry unbirthday to me. Yes, a very merry unbirthday. Okay, show of hands: who here doesn't know who dies this chapter because somehow they haven't watched the first Iron Man movie dozens of times? As a final note: this is the last chapter of this "oneshot", but before anyone asks, I already have plans for sequels focused on the other movies of Phase One and a request to eventually reach _Homecoming_.

 **Edited Author's Note (5/5/2019):** For everyone asking in comments & reviews, this is the last chapter of _Daedalus Bound_ , because this fic was only ever going to cover the timeline/events of the first Iron Man movie. The fic that will cover the events Iron Man 2 will come out mid-to-late August, but in the meantime, feel free to read the many other fics in _The Purpose of Aeries_ series, which will continue to be updated out of chronological order, as pieces are finished. As a matter of forewarning, please consider the following: 1) Harry will **_never_** attend a wizarding school; 2) the toxic timebomb that is the original Avengers lineup is not going to happen; 3) if you wish to leave questions, you need to be signed in to get answered; 4) a lot of the story occurs as it is written, but a significant portion is already decided, such as major canon events and how events of the story will affect them.

 **Challenge/Competition Block:** **  
Stacked with:** MC4A (FPC; T3; SN; Fence; Star; BAON)  
 **Individual Challenges:** Long Haul; Death's Inevitable Master; Team Logic; Neurodivergent; Quiet Time; Tiny Terror (Y); The Real MC (Y); Metahuman MC; Seeds **  
Representations:** Autistic Tony Stark; Autistic Harry Potter; Christine Everhart; Referenced Child Abuse, Ableism, & Gaslighting **  
Bonus Challenges:** Found Family; Nontraditional; Sneeze Weasel; Zucchini Bread; Bee Haven; Fizzy Lemonade; Machismo; Peddling Pots; Second Verse (Ladylike; Not a Lamp; Persistence Still; White Dress); Chorus (Endless Wonder; Pear-Shaped; Wabi Sabi)  
 **Tertiary Bonus Challenges:** T3 (Thimble); SN (Rail; Ameliorate) **  
Word Count:** 4592

-= LP =-  
 **The Purpose of Aeries**  
 _Daedalus Bound_  
Part 07: Waves  
-= LP =-  
 _Look who makes their own bed  
_ _Lies right down within it  
_ _And what will you have left?  
_ – Bastille, "Icarus"  
-= LP =-

"Anthony Edward Stark," James called out as he slammed open the door to the mansion. He was livid. Hell, it went beyond that. If it was just Tony running off in a piece of experimental tech to a terrorist incursion without government sanction, James would have been mad, but he could have excused it as just Tony being his normal impulsive self. But now there was someone else to consider, someone depending on Tony to not toss his life away on reckless stunts. Harry's status was far from secure in any way. SHIELD wasn't the only agency sniffing around him, asking questions. The only thing keeping the kid from disappearing into some government-controlled pit was how visible Tony was.

And Tony had risked everything by going back to Afghanistan.

"JARVIS, where is he?"

"Sir is in his workshop," JARVIS answered immediately. "He is uninjured but having difficulties removing the armor due to damage sustained in the battle. How is Captain Sinclair?"

"Oh, he's fine, thanks to Tones," James growled as he stomped to the stairs that led below, "but he would never have been in any danger if it wasn't for Tony, either!" He punched in his code with a bit more force than strictly necessary before shoving open the reinforced glass door. "Anthony Edward Stark, get your ass out here this minute."

"Uh, see, I would," Tony answered from farther into the space. James headed towards his voice. "There's just a little problem, honeybear." Tony gave him a sheepish grin as he rounded the wall of tool cabinets that separated the portions of workshop. All his limbs were captured by mechanical arms that were trying to remove the pieces of what must be the tech he had used in Gulmira. "Hi, platypus. What brings you to my humble abode at this delightful hour of the day?"

"You," James snapped, "and your goddamn idiocy! Do you have any idea how many people I had chewing my ass because of this stunt? This isn't MIT anymore, Tony! You can't keep pulling this shit!"

"I know, I do, but it was sort of a spur of the moment thing and it just got out of hand—"

" _Out of hand?_ Tony, I saw the footage! They shot at you from a fucking _tank_. Out of hand was a few hours before that, maybe somewhere in the twenty-two hours it takes to get to Afghanistan from here! Are you trying to get yourself killed? I could murder you myself, man!"

"NO!"

Before James could process that the cry hadn't come from Tony, there was a tiny body in front of Tony's trapped form. Harry had his arms thrown out to both sides. Only because James knew what to look for could he tell that the kid's weight was balanced enough that a blow was unlikely to knock him to the ground. Anger licked at James' mind for an entirely different reason than frustration with Tony's self-destructive habits, because no child should have known how to do that, and seeing Harry demonstrate it just served to remind James of just how much he wanted to rip apart the kid's previous guardians.

"Not Tony," Harry begged, his green eyes wide and dark with fear. He looked even paler than he normally did, but his little chin was still raised in determination. Any thoughts of anger crumbled to dust under the realization that Harry thought James was serious about his threat. "Me! I can take it! Please! _Please_ not Tony."

James felt like he was going to throw up. That went beyond simply thinking that James was serious. What the fuck had those monsters taught the kid? What the hell did he mean by he could take it?

"Tony—"

"No! Not Tony! Me," Harry insisted.

Harry charged forward, so different from the way he normally shied away people other than Tony. His hands fisted in the fabric of James' uniform pants and all James could think about was how far he had to look down to see the kid's face. He couldn't move, not with Harry practically standing on his feet, and he didn't dare reach out for the kid while he was thinking James was really going to hurt either of them. He could hear Tony fighting more desperately with the mechanical arms, but all he could see was Harry's dark green eyes against a darkening landscape.

"Harry—" James cut himself off, uncertain what he was going to say. For all that he recognized the similarities between Tony and Harry, this was _nothing_ like how Tony would react to something. Tony tended to lash out when he got defensive, usually verbally and very rarely physically, even when that defensiveness was for someone else. Yet the kid wasn't attacking, just clinging and begging for James to take his anger out on him instead. It was sickening, especially as Harry worked himself up to the point that he couldn't even form words any more.

The choking sounds that replaced those words finally snapped him out of his confusion. He could think about things later. Right now he needed to focus on acting, because the kid was going to make himself sick at this rate. With a motion that should not fell as natural as it did, James scooped up the kid. He tried not to think about how even almost a month later, Harry still felt too light in his arms. Harry didn't relax into limpness like he normally did.

James didn't take Harry farther than the motor box that ran the mechanical arms. Separating Tony and Harry was only going to get him two panicking koala-cats, which honestly, after the morning he had had, James wasn't certain that he was up to handling. He lifted one of Harry's hand and placed it against his chest. He focused on breathing instead of the memories that were now screaming in his head from the skin contact. Breathing was better than throwing up or giving into the urge to start screaming himself.

Harry already thought the worst because James had lost his temper. No need to confirm that. No need to affirm the similarities that Harry had seen between James and the blond horse in his memories. Seriously, mutation or not, who the fuck does that shit to a kid? James couldn't give into imagining the things he wanted to do to the people who had hurt Harry before Tony had managed to get him home, not when he didn't know if Harry could see fantasies as well as memories.

Instead, he focused on all the stupid situations he had caught Tony in over their twenty-plus years of whatever they were. He focused on how often he had just scooped the dumbass up and carried him off to that ugly red couch that U had ended up setting on fire during Pepper's first day on the job. He focused the fear he had felt every time he had found Tony hurt or missing, the terror he had felt finding Tony's broken phone surrounded by dead servicemen, the heartbreak of watching the kid curled up against Jarvis in that hospital bed.

An echo grew amongst the memories that James was trying to will Harry to see. It sounded vaguely like JARVIS except _not_ at the same time. It wasn't until the words became clearer that James realized that it wasn't _JARVIS_ speaking them, but _Jarvis_ , meaning that Harry had to have picked them up from Tony.

" _If someone tries to kill you, poppet_ ," Jarvis was saying, " _you try to kill them right back. Do you understand? Every single time, and don't you dare hesitate, do you hear? That's what you can do if you really feel that you have to make up for this. Ana would not have wished for anything else."_

The haze of memories cleared, taking with it the feeling of pressure that James hadn't even noticed before it was gone. Harry's tiny hand had fisted around the ribbons decorating the left breast of James's uniform. It felt icy under James's hand, like the kid was suddenly freezing. James found himself staring into Harry's eyes. The cat-like green enthralled him; it seemed impossible that a human would have such a brilliant color. Harry blinked slowly three times.

"Rhodey," he said before slumping forward as he fell unconscious. James barely managed to catch the kid from the suddenness. From nearby, James heard the name echoed but with more frustration. Tony was still fighting to get the last bit of mechanical armor off.

"Harry appears to be only sleeping," JARVIS answered before either man could think to ask the question. "His glucose level does appear to be a bit low, but not dangerously so and his system appears to be correcting that a bit. He will require substance when he wakes, and I recommend not causing him any more stress for the next few days, if at all possible."

"I didn't mean to—" James started only to be interrupted by JARVIS.

"I understand, Col. Rhodes," JARVIS said mechanically enough that James winced. JARVIS tended to show his anger by sounding increasingly robotic. "You were unaware that Harry had already witnessed Sir arrival after nearly dying from an icing issue during his first flight in the suit and then had watched the same battle from the suit's camera feed. He had already had one prolonged panic attack and then several more acute ones prior to your unorthodox arrival. My consolation with an expert suggested that emotional equilibrium should be restored after decent sleep and a return to the previously established schedule."

"Consolation with an expert?" James asked. Tony was suddenly by his side, gently taking Harry from him.

"J's been tattling to IRIS," he said before carrying Harry over to the sectional. "Apparently, we're having guests in a few weeks, which no one has bothered to make sure that I knew about, and now with all of this—" Tony gestured towards the mechanical arms and a decidedly crushed car that James was going to ask about later. "—I have no clue whether that's a good idea."

"Mama did mention wanting to meet Harry."

"That's what Jenny said, right before telling me that I got to tell her if I canceled." Tony settled Harry down in the spot he had been sleeping since they had arrived from Afghanistan. The boy turned into the fingers Tony ran over his cheek.

"Well, I'm not gonna tell her," James said, ignoring how his heart melted at the gesture.

"Rude, platypus," Tony countered, not looking up from Harry. "I am sorry, you know. It's just that when we saw the news footage, we couldn't—" Tony looked up then. His eyes were haunted. "There was another captive there. He didn't make it out."

"Tony, you don't have to—"

"He was from Gulmira."

"I was still worried," James admitted. He crossed the room. "You were gone for three months, man. I didn't know if you were dead or alive. Then you come back and you're safe, but there's all these conspiracies. Any one of them would be dangerous enough, but together? Now you want to be, what, a superhero?"

"I know that I'm not really what anyone would call a hero—"

"That's Howard talking," James interrupted. "I should have punched the bastard when I had the chance." He sighed deeply. Tony had settled on the couch next to Harry and was running his fingers through Harry's wild curls. "My superiors are demanding answers, especially with the audit going on and weapon production halted. If you want to keep doing this, you can't do it under the radar or things like what happened today will keep happening."

"I know," Tony agreed. His eyes dropped back to Harry's face. "Is the pilot okay?"

"He's fine, Tones." James forced cheer into his tone. "I wasn't joking about you owing me a new plane, you know."

"I maintain that he hit me," Tony countered, his press persona sliding into place. "Pink alright with you?"

"Standard gray will be fine."

"Spoilsport."

-= LP =-

Debriefing with Rhodey was a lot easier when it involved danger that didn't involve Harry. Without Harry involved, there was less stress to find the right words to shroud things while not seeming to be hiding anything. Dancing the line on propriety tech was a much more familiar dance. Rhodey had left with the report, confident that they could work out something that would allow Tony to operate more or less independently while still being on the sanctioned side of things.

The moment Rhodey had cleared the driveway, Tony had set JARVIS to researching this General Turner, because as much as he loved his platypus, all the military branches had their version of General Ross and under no circumstances would Tony ever work under such a person's direct command. Thankfully Turner seemed to have almost as sparkling record as Rhodey did. He was newly appointed to his rank, too, which meant that Tony would have five years before needing to worry about dealing with a replacement.

Heeding what JARVIS had said about Harry needing to eat, Tony headed upstairs to see what they had in the way of real food. Smoothies and dried fruit were great, but Tony had a hankering for something with noodles like Italian or Chinese. He wasn't certain what Harry would like, but spaghetti was simple and always a hit with kids, right? Tony had loved it when he was a kid, when Maria had the rare day when she had both the time and energy to make it.

"Hey, JARVIS," Tony said as he opened a cupboard at random, "do we have any pasta?"

There was no answer.

Tony paused his search of the cupboards, sensing danger for the first time since coming up from the lab. He could feel it now, the way the air held a tension. The growing shadows of dusk seemed thicker, almost restless. Shadows have been acting funny since Tony had met Harry, though, like they had something more in them, so that didn't worry him as much as the missing hum of JARVIS.

He wandered out of the kitchen, checking the staircase down to the workshop. Protocols would have secured the doors as soon as JARVIS lost connection with the house, but glass could still break and there was still that gaping hole over the cars. The lab was still set to nighttime parameters, but Tony could see Dummy calmly organizing things on the front project table. No intruder down there, then. Dummy would never be that sedate if a stranger was near Harry, not without Tony or JARVIS to mediate and not so soon after the upset earlier.

Tony moved into the front room, regretting for the first time the open floorplan he had used for the space. It was stylish and nothing like the compact floorplan of the Stark Manor, but it also gave no cover if he was attacked. The hairs on the back of his neck raised. Whatever the threat was, it was in this room, even if he couldn't see it.

The rarely used house phone started ringing from somewhere near the sectional. The sound was muffled, suggesting that the displaced pillow near the center might be covering it. Tony moved towards it despite his instincts screaming at him. He didn't have any more immediate way of getting answers.

Instead of identifying a caller, the call simply said ' _rebooting; Stane_.'

Tony twisted even as his senses were overcome by a burst of barely perceivable sound. Obie shushed him like he was an upset child as he lowered Tony's now-unresponsive body to the couch. Tony's heart pounded against the back of the reactor as the paralysis made the muscles of his chest seize just enough that it was impossible to get a full breath. Anyone else might have been fine, maybe just a little winded.

Those people hadn't lost an estimated twenty percent of their lung capacity due to a dubious surgery in an Afghan cave performed by a physicist.

The numbers spun out as his mind raced through the calculations of how long he had before hypoxia set in and he started experiencing tissue death. The odds were not in his favor, not even with the reduced average time of the paralysis in him. The strange thought of how angry JARVIS was going to be about Harry's emotional equilibrium had been upset yet again crossed Tony's mind.

At least the kid should be safe in Rhodey's care. All of his boys would be. Rhodey would take care of them. That plan had been in placed for decades. JARVIS would make sure that Harry was legally protected just the same as the bots. Obie had no reason to even suspect that Harry even existed, let alone was sleeping downstairs. Even if Obie's plan wasn't to just let Tony suffocate, the workshop was reinforced against anything short of a nuke.

"Ah, Tony," Obie muttered as he removed the earbuds that Tony had developed along with the emitter, "when I ordered the hit on you, I had worried that I was killing the golden goose."

He tucked the buds into a case on the sofa before smiling down at Tony. Obie pulled a strange device from the same case. A twist of the handle caused its spindly legs to retract. Dread flooded Tony as his mind provided him with how the dimensions matched the reactor perfectly. It washed away the measure of peace he had been feeling. Suffocation was relatively painless; feeling his heart being shredded would not be. Obie's smile grew smugly satisfied as he placed his foot next to Tony's hip to casually lean over him with the device in one hand.

"But as fate would have it, you still had one last golden egg to give," Obie explained as he lined up the device. Tony grunted as it locked into place with the same magnetic pull that the reactor was using to keep the shrapnel from moving. He would have vomited if he could have as the man who had supported him after his parents' accident removed physical representation of his heart.

Fuck, Obie was his godfather despite the double dealing that Tony was still gathering evidence on.

"Do you really think that just because you have an idea, that it belongs to you?" The glowing node cast strange shadows over Obie's face as he leaned closer to Tony. "Your father helped give us the atomic bomb. Now what kind of world would we live in today if he had been as selfish as you?"

To punctuate the question, Obie yanked the reactor the last little bit needed to fully free it from Tony's chest. Tony hadn't even realized how used to the low thrum of it he had become until it was suddenly gone. He could feel the chill of the air hitting the plasmatic discharge that coated the cavity left by the missing reactor. Oh, Tesla, it felt like his heart was going to escape out the opening as he watched Obie openly admire the tech.

"This is your Ninth Symphony, Tony." Obie sat beside Tony. The arm not holding up the node curled around Tony's shoulders, as if they were holding a friendly conversation. The shadows of the room danced around them as if they were alive. "This is your legacy: a new generation of weapons with this at its heart. They will help steer the world back on course, return the balance of power to the right hands." Obie pulled away to begin packing away both his extractor and the ARC reactor. He continued talking to Tony as if they weren't in the middle of a murder. "I wish you could see my prototype, Tony. It's not as, hm, _conservative_ as yours, but then you always did think small."

The click of the case locking sounded faintly like a tomb being sealed. Obie stood; his hand wrapped possessively around the handle of the case. He smiled down as Tony before speaking again.

"I really should thank you while I have the chance. They had been very reluctant to hand over the boy, despite receiving payment. Clearly, they had realized how valuable he was. I admit that I was a bit worried when I found that they had lost him around the same time you had wiggled loose. Imagine my delight when Agent Coulson asked me about your new ward. I will so enjoy getting to know him better, after you're gone."

Something dark roiled in Tony's gut at the very thought of Obie anywhere near Harry. His fingers twitched with the urge to scratch Obie's eyes out. Before anything else could be said, the elevator to the workshop opened its doors.

"Tony," Harry called softly. The way Obie had positioned him, Tony had a perfect view of Harry standing there, rubbing an eye as if he was still waking up. The still unnamed bunny dangled from Harry's other hand. "JARVIS?"

Tony saw the moment that Harry finally noticed the occupants of the front room. Harry's green eyes went wide at the sight of Obie standing over him. Tony wanted to scream for Harry to run, to retreat back to the elevator and hide in the workshop, in that stupid nest that Tony had hated. Harry focused on Tony with a precision that he normally didn't display at the distance currently between them.

"TONY!" he screamed before dropping his rabbit to race across the room.

Harry's hands scrabbled over Tony's chest, franticly covering the gaping hole. Tony twitched, wanting to comfort the distraught boy more than he wanted to breathe. Darkness was edging in on his vision, wrapping around Harry like a physical blanket. Harry suddenly stilled and turned towards Obie who was just watching the scene unfold.

" _Give it back_ ," Harry demanded. His voice echoed strangely to Tony's ears. Could someone get double-hearing like they got double-vision? The shadows felt as solid as Harry did. Tony could swear he felt something silky like a thick cloak sliding over his skin. " _Give it back_ _ **now**_ _._ "

"My dear boy—"

Harry screamed. It sounded like the cry of a hawk, full of defiant warning. The shadows moved in a way that was undeniably alive, wrapping around Obie like a shroud. Tighter and tighter, the shadows twisted around Obie. From the thick mass arose crunching and slurping like something was feasting messily on something. Tony found himself morbidly fascinated with the idea despite the quickly impending death he was facing.

 _Who turned out the lights_ , _indeed?_

Shadows untwisted, leaving nothing that Tony could see without being able to look down. Harry fell to his knees, fumbling with something before rising again. The reactor's glow looked more beautiful than even that first glimpse of Rhodey after the cave had been. With the deftness that Tony had come to expect from him, Harry slotted the reactor back in place. The jolt of the electromagnet coming back online forced the nearby muscles to unlock. Grateful for it, Tony sucked in as deep a breath as he could anymore.

The rush of oxygen was better than the bite of caffeine after the twentieth hour in the workshop. The shadows retreated back to normal as Tony sat there breathing. The paralysis retreated but left an achy stiffness behind. The urge to medicate it away with a stiff scotch brought with it the memory of why that was no longer an option. Tony looked around, knowing that Harry wouldn't have wandered too far.

Harry stood just out of immediate reach. His entire body trembled with the tension running through his little body. He had his chin raised just slightly even if the rest of him looked like he was bracing for a blow. Something in Tony relaxed slightly at the small show of defiance in Harry's clear expectation of punishment. Seeing it felt like a victory all its own, because Tony _knew_ that Harry would never have dared to show it back in the cave.

He had come so far in barely more than three weeks.

Tony leaned forward, ignoring how Harry flinched to pull the tiny boy into his lap. Harry instantly melted against him. His fists bunched in Tony's shirt as he shook with silent sobs. Tony held him through the tears, letting the chaotic whirlwind of memories swirl through them and nudging it gently away from the darker aspects. The universe spun around them, sharply clear in the same way it had been back in that endless moment in the cave but unimportant compared to the boy shivering against Tony's chest.

"I've got you, little bug," Tony assured him, "and I'm _never_ going to let you go."

-= LP =-

"Last month, I stood before you and told you about the security breach that had resulted in Stark Industry weapons technology in the hands of unauthorized parties," Tony opened. The crowd of reporters was politely silent. "I promised a full investigation as well as a halt of further weapons production until such a time as I could be certain that a recurrence of this issue could be prevented. It has now become clear that the only way to do that is to no longer produce weapons entirely. Effective immediately, Stark Industries will no longer produce weapons."

There was an explosion of shouting as the reporters tried to ask their questions all at once. Tony waited until the fervor had died a bit to pick one to answer. It was not Christine Everhart who was sitting quietly on the front row, her smile smug like she thought she knew something. Tony was going to enjoy rubbing her face in it.

"Mr. Stark, what of your military contracts? Are you backing out of them?"

"Stark Industries will not be abandoning our government contracts entirely," Tony explained. He just barely managed not to roll his eyes. Why did everyone forget that SI was more than just a weapons company? "It may have slipped your minds, but we are more than iron mongers now. SI is the leading producer in three different fields, which we are also contracted to provide for the government."

Christine raised her hand. The satisfied grin on her face made Tony almost regret how much he was going to enjoy destroying her paradigm. But the _Vanity Fair_ journalist didn't know that Tony already knew about the scoop she thought she had. Tony pointed at her. With the same scary efficiency that people tended to overlook in Pepper, she rose to her feet.

"What about the mechanical armor that was seen freeing the town of Gulmira last week? Is the iron man Stark Industry tech?"

"Iron man?" Tony repeated, rubbing a hand over his beard. He looked over the crowd to where Harry was standing next to Pepper. The boy pushed his new glasses up his nose. Tony hummed thoughtfully. "Catchy. I like it. The Iron Man suit is not Stark Industry technology. It's mine." Tony gave the room a rakish grin. "It's a personal prosthetic."

"Do you really expect us to believe that? Even after seeing its capabilities in Gulmira? Tell us the truth, Mr. Stark."

Tony looked back at Harry, still watching him beside Pepper. From behind him, Tony heard Rhodey give a quiet sigh of resignation. Tony focused back on Christine, letting his eyes meet her challenging gaze.

"The truth is," Tony said with every bit of feeling he had on the matter, "I am Iron Man."

-= LP =-  
An Ending  
-= LP =-


End file.
